No reason simply to assume that closing the overall generic ballot gap in the broad population will have greatly affected the numbers among scientists - even if you don't rely on the excuses commonly offered previously that scientists are overly influenced by a combination of groupthink and self-interest.
We'll just have to wait and see whether conservative self-identification among scientists has greatly increased. Maybe it's even doubled! To... 16%... (From minuscule to merely desperately small...)
2. Left more "closed" than the right - could well be. I acknowledged as much from the top. Why should that be an excuse for the anti-intellectualism and extreme closed-mindedness exhibited by Levin and other popular hard right conservatives? If the perception that conservatives are closed-minded on some topics is false, though somewhat prevalent, then one way, among others, to dispense with it is to subject closed-minded offerings to criticism.
Conservatives want to think of themselves as more open-minded and non-ideological in their thinking and beliefs than liberals. That sets a higher burden before them. Merely acting on a blinkered assumption of open-mindedness isn't enough.
3. You continue to want to recruit Dr. Curry to the right. Until Dr. Curry herself has made the avowals and confessions, you do her a service, or perhaps a disservice, but the conclusion remains premature. You have no idea whether, say, Dr. Curry voted for Barack Obama and would do so again. That she criticizes and may have broken with a nominally non-partisan outfit that you associate with the left is not a greatly significant political fact, unless you believe that there are not and cannot be intellectually, morally, and financially corrupt institutions and individuals of the right.
Unfortunately, in the trenches, including this trench, I see plentiful evidence of closed minds on the right - especially those individuals who persist in the entirely un-conservative framing of a scientific question so that one set of answers must qualify as conservative, the others as liberal. That's a position worthy of Joseph Stalin, not William F Buckley.
4. You again speculate that an external event - now passage of HCR - might greatly alter the Pew Poll results. For all we know, HCR may have driven a large section of merely rather liberal scientists into the hard liberal or ultra- liberal camps. We just don't know and can't know until we do know.
The breakdown of the AAAS membership is irrelevant to the Pew Poll, which was designed to asses political affinities of scientists, not AAAS' broad membership. Specifically:
Results for the scientist survey are based on 2,533 online interviews conducted from May 1 to June 14, 2009 with members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A sample of 9,998 members was drawn from the AAAS membership list excluding those who were not based in the United States or whose membership type identified them as primary or secondary-level educators.
I don't see why you would want to exclude student members of the AAAS, on the other hand, in whatever numbers they made up the sample, in an effort to assess attitudes among scientists. They are presumably grad students, possibly including some undergraduates in the sciences, not kindergartners.
Your C argument runs up its own posterior: That AAAS does liberal things offers anecdotal evidence for the proposition that AAAS is as liberal as the poll indicates. You wouldn't expect an 8% conservative organization to be purchasing state rooms on the National Review cruise.
Your D argument is more self-serving speculation. You're asking me to take your "hypotheses" about what a theoretically better poll might show against the bona fides of Pew Research. In other words, on this topic as well as others, when a respected organization produces data you don't like, they're "garbage." Their data and methodology are open for all to see and to make of what anyone will. Their results happen to conform to anecdotal evidence and to other polling regarding the state of political opinion and affinities in the scientific community. Your speculation, on the other hand, merely conforms to your wishful thinking. Excuse me, but I'll take Pew over "After Seven" for now, without assuming that Pew is the end of the discussion or immune from criticism.
As for Murray's graph, it illustrates a certain peculiar trend that Mr. Murray, among others, found impressive. No one attached the one-sidedness to the results that you do. Not only am I "open to the possibility that there are thousands, perhaps even millions... of open-minded conservatives," I presume as much, and use Manzi as an example of the species. The Murray graph appears to reflect a trend, it doesn't portray a monolith.
As for whether conservatives "intentionally and reflexively deride science and intellectuals," am I to assume that you do not consider Mark Levin a conservative? Going back for a very long time, many conservatives have been complained about scientism. In the wake of the (A)GW debates, the claim that science has been corrupted has become common, and is thrown around in such a way that, if I were a scientist, I might well find offensive. The misuse and abuse of scientific proceedings occurs on both sides.
5. You claim that conservatives all follow the part of the Manzi suggestion that you find intelligible, and then you proceed to contradict it in your further explication, importing every manner of "I hate liberals" into what is a narrow discussion: Should conservatives, on the question of GW, be advocating for one "side" of the scientific question, or should they be advocating a conservative approach to the scientific question in its political dimensions?
6. The statement of mine that you quote describes "some" conservatives. You go on to concede that three of the most popular conservatives in the country (supported, incidentally, by legions of ditto-ing followers) might justify my description, and yet choose to take offense on behalf of others unnamed.
The reason that I offer no proof of some monolithic conservative anti-scientific closed-mindedness is that I made no claim of a monolithic conservative anti-scientific closed-mindedness.
Seeking offense by exaggerating the statements of others is, however, a good example of one mechanism that often supports "epistemic closure" on the part of some conservatives (as well as some liberals).
7. The main point as to the politicization of science is discussed above. Some scientific matters have clearly become political to some conservatives. Just check this comment thread or, even better, the comment thread over at HotAir, for clear evidence that some conservatives are appalled even at the suggestion that GW-related issues should be assessed without pre-judgment.
8. We have no way of determining objectively what the divergence of the Murray stratum from the rest of the population means. Maybe the other trend lines would be even more pronounced in conservatives' favor if the Intellectual Uppers weren't fighting against them. Maybe the other trend lines help drive the Intellectual Uppers further away. There are lots of possibilities.
Even if there was no important political or practical problem or risk involved - I think there might be, as outlined in the top post - I take it as a given that it would be better for the intellectuals themselves (and their students and acolytes) as well as for larger society if they were more open to conservative ideas and insights, if they were exploring and extending conservative approaches in culture, politics, administration, and so on, if they were contributing financially and personally to conservative causes or at worst relatively neutral. We might have a richer and more dynamic culture - a good in itself - and better science and intellectual work, too.
Maybe, for example, the elite media (intellectual uppers par excellence), if less skewed ideologically, would do a better job of exposing supposedly moderate and open-minded presidential candidates for the ideological leftist they are, rather than participating in a sham, thus better enabling a right-trending populace to make a properly informed decision.
It was too pedestrian a scheme, compared to Zorin’s psychotic earth quake plot, Stromberg’s sub launching super tanker, Drax’s space station, I know Die another DAy, went too far, but there has to be
a happy medium.
I sit doubly shocked, shocked (or would that be quadruply shocked?), first that a film with Olga Kurylenko would get dissed at ZC, second that y'all ain't positively responding to the fact that the evil bad guy was an eco-fraud! And pre-Climategate! Obviously I found the brutal violence and the utterly absurd parachute escape, and inferno art climax more diverting, but y'all are being hard cases. Now I've got to do some work so play nice while I'm gone, and never say NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN again.
@ J.E. Dyer:
I use GW to refer to the broad policy issue. In my view there are, in theory, a wide range of possible combinations of actual-GW, possible-GW, actual-AGW, possible-AGW, in varying proportions. We could conclude or learn, for example, that there had been no recent AGW to the 95% confidence level (the widely mischaracterized Phil Jones "retraction" was of this character), but that at radically higher concentrations of CO2, AGW could kick in with a vengeance. We could conclude or learn that we were in a cyclical natural warming trend, but that human intervention could counteract whatever damaging effects, or that at some point AGW could make it worse. We could conclude that there was no GW, or even that there was Global Cooling, but that AGW was not just possible, but desirable. There are endless possibilities.
Certainly all participants in public discussion will sooner or later end up referring to authorities and their own logic - a fully qualified scientist refers to the "authority" of experimental results and the logic of analysis - but when citizen JED rises up to say that the Hockey Stick's a joke, she's always implicitly saying "authority A plus evidence B by way of logic train C has led me to conclude that HS is a joke." The power of her assertion is that, a free citizen of evident intelligence, she has become a full-blown skeptic. The political question is how much weight to give to the voices of skeptical citizens in the process - on all sides.
In the effort to add to that weight on our own side, assuming we have one, any of us is in a position to make, quoting Manzi's original Levin post, "a fundamental argument that proceeds from evidence available for common inspection through a defined line of logic to a scientific view." In the public dimension, quoting Manzi's reply post, where he imagines a political leader attempting to make a responsible decision in the face of disagreement on facts, the parallel process is "gather together a group of the leading subject-matter experts to produce a review of known science, and subject it to review by a standing body of leading scientists who are not directly in the field in order to minimize both groupthink and opportunities for self-dealing." He goes on briefly to describe the current process for achieving same.
It was to the second suggestion that McCarthy responded, in essence, "Go away, kid, you bother me." That won't be acceptable to all of the evidently intelligent citizens who have come out on the other side from you.
the possibility of AGW is an important issue, well lets debate it,
I don't really care what someone like me - or you - thinks about GW. It's like asking me to go to bat against major league pitching. I know only enough about science to get things comically wrong and to be misled, pretty much.
I do know something about discourse, and I've learned a little bit about political science over the years, and, as an American I have as much right as anyone else, expert or doofus, to weigh in on whether the political process looks fair, and whether participants in the discussion are performing credibly.
But their argument is actually that we don’t face the alternative of either accepting that government or going up in the smoke of an overwarmed atmosphere.
Levin and McCarthy are saying that we haven’t established anything about what our climate’s doing that should trump the national-level guarantee of liberties. What is the evidence that we have?
And this is why it's an epistemological, or perhaps borderline epistemological question. The questions are a) how do or can they know that to be true?; and b) how can the public, we, come to accept that truth?
The first goes to what process for determining the truth they undertake and demonstrate. It can be criticized, and we are free to take or leave what they say, to consult other authorities or analysts of authorities, and form our own opinions.
As for the second, if the manner of argumentation and presentation leaves an unbiased observer with as much or more reason to doubt that process as to trust it, or to prefer someone else's process, then McCarthy or Levin's "truth" is the proverbial tree falling in the forest, no one being inclined to listen. Blown up to the level of public policy, that suggests an authority-gathering and -testing process with error-checking.
As Manzi points out in his "apology" post, we have such processes already in place. If they need to be improved, then improving or, in the extreme, replacing them - for the sake of a process that's more resistant to self-interest and other forms of corruption - is something that non-experts on the underlying scientific questions can fruitfully pursue. Let Lindzen, Lomborg, Muller, and Joe all give their skeptical inputs, but there is no reason for Weitzman, Mann, Jones, or Barack Obama to trust the process if it begins with a pre-determined result, and if all participants aren't somewhat assured that the "losers" will abide by the results, while retaining whatever agreed-upon future opportunities to amend.
You, JED, like Joe and others here are GW skeptics. I think you could be fairly termed "denialists," for the sake of discussion, once we remove any pejorative connotation from the term: You deny that GW is a problem. We can likewise define "alarmists" simply as people who are "alarmed" by what they have come to believe about GW. (Of course, the alarmists are also denialists in the sense that they deny the denialists, and the denialists tend to be alarmed about the alarmists, but we'll avoid moving on to such arguments on the second order and beyond, mainly because we accept going in that everyone has a right to deny or set alarms in a free society, without being pre-judged for his or her denial or alarm.)
McCarthy in one of his responses to Manzi presumes the denialist position when he says, essentially, "GW isn't a big enough deal for me to be bothered about it when we have wars to fight, an economy to rescue, and political sanity to restore." That's what prompts Manzi to ask, "How do you know it's not a big deal?" How can you or we know or come to accept that it's not a big deal? That's when this begins to become an epistemological or borderline epistemological question.
In the public sphere, the denialists can't be bothered, but the alarmists are super-bothered. A democratic system gives the alarmists a right to be heard without their claims being pre-judged. If they are successful in persuading enough people that the better course is to let them have their way, then they get their way.
Similarly, if a national consensus is reached that we need an income tax, that women deserve the right to vote, that alcoholic spirits should neither be sold nor consumed, that Communism is evil and must be fought, that underwear should be worn on the outside, and that the word "gravity" should never be uttered on prime time TV for the sake of public safety, then that's the way things are gonna go.
And if the losers on the underwear-on-the-outside controversy come to believe that it was a rigged game and that they and their children and their children's children will never have an opportunity to restore their briefs to where they belong, then the system becomes to that degree less credible and more vulnerable to eventual breakdown.
And that's why the political question isn't and can't be about GW per se, it's about how we decide issues like "the GW issue," including whether the GW issue deserves to be treated as an important issue, and whether that decision on the issue's importance needs to be reviewed, ad more or less infinitum.
@ Sully:
I believe I addressed the question of Manzi's tone - which I think probably should have been calibrated more carefully - something Manzi admits when he apologizes in his follow-up post. Otherwise, I think you're being a little oversensitive on Levin's behalf.
Anyway, intellectual respect is different from politeness. Sometimes they come into conflict. Taking an imbecile's ideas seriously may lead to embarrassing said imbecile.
"Closed-minded" was already proposed several times as an adequate plain talk synonym. However, to say someone is closed-minded doesn't tell you very much. Arguing, as strangelet does above, that the con elites merely pretend to be closed-minded in order to please the base, is a flexible and also not very revelatory charge - as if lib elites don't do the same thing? As if anyone in daily life doesn't withhold thoughts or feelings for the sake of not offending others, for whatever reasons, but in the end for reasons of self-interest?
I don't know if Sanchez has gone into detail about his reasons for using the specific term, but I think he wanted to put a post-structuralist spin on his critique of conservative "discourse," while keeping it somewhat grounded empirically in a description of the familiar conservative media complex. When he deploys the word "episteme," he summons Foucault to testify from the grave as follows:
I would define the episteme retrospectively as the strategic apparatus which permits of separating out from among all the statements which are possible those that will be acceptable within, I won’t say a scientific theory, but a field of scientificity, and which it is possible to say are true or false. The episteme is the ‘apparatus’ which makes possible the separation, not of the true from the false, but of what may from what may not be characterised as scientific.
The context was the discussion of the history of science, as a history of scientific discourses rather than a history of progressive discoveries, which Foucault in other works extended to other realms.
Sanchez's idea, apparently, was that conservatives more so than liberals - perhaps because driven into a "bunker" - are unable to process, even acknowledge the existence of certain kinds of evidence or argument. I would argue instead that to the extent anyone's "discourse" can be characterized as ideological, it is "epistemically closed" (I was saying something like this just the other day without the "e" word). The Marxists were here first, at least with the terminology, though it goes without saying that to the beginning of time, all discourses are defined as much by what they exclude as by what they contain. This apparently goes for theories of mathematics and cybernetic systems, as well. It also happens to be a theme of "the Latest Freed Man," a poem that gave great delight to a post-structuralist professor of mine back in the day.
To bring us back to the present topic, Levin and his partner in epistemic crime Andy McCarthy almost fall over themselves demonstrating their ideological closure. It is clear from word one, or nearly, that they would remain uninterested in global warming per se even up to the moment that the atmosphere itself exploded in flame. They have already decided that they'd rather the world came to an end than see a virtual world government telling people like them where to set their thermostats or how fast to drive. They would fight that to the death, just as during the Cold War they would have been prepared to see the world's great cities incinerated and the skies blackened with radioactive soot rather than give into SOVIET DOMINATION.
When induced actually to discuss this matter about which they are virtually incapable of caring very much, they will pursue familiar modes of selective perception and attention. These can be isolated and criticized, and are rather obvious to anyone not predisposed to agree with them. Can anyone read Levin and doubt that, while searching through authorities, if he found 10 supporting the GW case, he'd keep on reading until he found an 11th whose doubts could be inflated until they seemed to outweigh and overwhelm the 10 contradictory positions?
It may even be that #11 is more right than #s 1 to 10, but in a political context people who don't begin with Levin's biases and prejudices, and who are incapable of assessing the science for themselves, have to go on apparent credibility - perform their own discourse analysis by way of intuition. They may not be able to perform a Foucauldian or Derridean or Althusserian or wheoverian critique, but they can tell when someone ain't listening and ain't interested in listening. They can also often sense when someone else is selling them a bill of goods.
Into a state of uncertainty and anger, someone like Manzi comes along with sophisticated but fairly easily understandable, and logical, set of ideas about how to proceed to a less than perfect, but democratically supportable, testable, and criticizeable project. Conservatives should support it not just to reach the best decision on GW, or for the sake of extracting maximum political advantage from Climategate, but for the sake of the entire policy process, the good of scientists, and the good of all political participants.
@ strangelet:
Based on that rather pathetic but all too human college sex confessional thing - that I just looked up for the first time? I think you may be reading a tad bit much into it with the broken glass granny bit.
Odd that anyone would detest Douthat. I've actually grown to appreciate him more lately.
The "what was Manzi up to question" has led me to think a little bit more about the moment - the transition from populism-led conservative resurgence to the next conservative coalition, which may take longer than some would prefer, or might be accelerated by events. I may put together a post about it later.
I don't know how conscious Manzi was of specific intentions, and I'm not sure what difference it would make anyway, though it might tell you interesting things about Manzi. Conscious or not, it's a moment of potentially productive stress between elements of the conservative coalition, loosening the control of the likes of Levin and other substitute intellectuals on public speech and thought within the movement - a more mature and possibly less internecine version of the Frum/NRO split.
@ Rex Caruthers:
He had the potential to have been a terrific blogger - see 18th Brumaire... Fifth rate's a little harsh. Maybe we can agree he occasionally showed some symptoms of epistemic closure.
@ Rex Caruthers:
Additionally, as I'm sure you're well aware and as I expect Margo will also recall, once upon a time it was quite common, virtually the obligatory response among "thinking people," to say that the Depression was "proof" of the validity of Marxist economics - to say nothing of other more parochial and less widely disseminated "proofs." I think you've noted elsewhere that neo-Marxists can hardly restrain their glee and their sense of long-delayed validation in viewing the world's current economic difficulties.
And Colin, Manzi’s “‘most important’ argument” is meretricius, relying as it does on a wholly manufactured ambiguity in the meaning of a single word.
I disagree, but, if you're right, Levin had a golden opportunity to turn Manzi's self-designated "most important argument" (on that point) against Manzi. Instead, Levin completely ignored it. He was too busy coming up with derisive jibes, apparently - just as you're very busy making, again, at length, arguments about AGW that are beyond the scope of Manzi's complaints against Levin. If Levin had made your arguments about AGW, in the way that you make them, then Manzi would have had a different post on Levin to put up, if any.
@ strangelet:
Manzi apologized, in a manner that looked to me to be quite sincere, for giving "offense," though he didn't specifically repent on the w-word - which was directed at Levin's work, not quite the same as being directed at Levin himself. In other words a non-wingnut might conceivably produce a work with elements of wingnuttery from time to time (even though the Bible does say that ye shall know them by their nuts).
I think it's plain what Manzi was attempting to do. Shake things up, following Douthat's "call." I think Manzi, as in the self-deprecating remark about going on in "excruciating detail" on the Krugman III post, is also conscious of the fact that he may sometimes go over people's heads, or fail to supply the drama that, say, a typical fan of Mark Levin feeds on, and that, as a result, his efforts to fight a drift into radicalism and closed-mindedness are sometimes ignored.
So the temptation is to put a little extra "oomph" in the ping just to make sure you get a reading back on the sonar. It was a bit daring - not storming a pillbox at Iwo Jima, but intellectually brave all the same - to take on "the Great One" at NRO, and in such terms. Precisely calibrating one's attack in such a situation - violent enough to make an impression, careful enough not to subvert itself - can be quite difficult, and sooner or later a writer may just say "to hell with it, here's my shot."
@ Joe NS:
Why would Manzi, in a critique narrowly focused on the mode of argumentation employed in a chapter of Levin's book, at a point more narrowly focused on a single argument deployed in that chapter, be obligated to assess the history of the IPCC reports and their endorsers?
Your comment is at 1290 words longer than Manzi's 1204-word post on Levin's book - yet manages only briefly to address the question under discussion here. You asked for an example of what I meant by Levin's failing to address Manzi's or other people's arguments at their strongest. I provided an example of Levin completely ignoring Manzi's "most important" argument, and instead focusing deceptively on his lesser argument. Levin's approach is disrespectful to Manzi, disrespectful to the reader, disrespectful to the subject, and disrespectful to himself. Protagoras can go fish.
For all I know, Levin was taking perverse pleasure in refusing to treat Manzi's argument on the terms in which Manzi advanced it. A partisan of Levin's might see some justification, since Manzi bushwhacked Levin. Unfortunately, as Manzi demonstrated, Levin doesn't need to be attacked "out of nowhere" to be found resorting to dishonest, deceptive, and diversionary tactics.
You use the discussion of the narrow example as an excuse to launch off into another disquisition on the meaning and history of AGW, AGW propaganda, and related/thinly related subjects. Maybe you should write a book.
Colin, I have to agree with Joe’s main point about “judging the science”–if the prediction fails, the theory fails.
The "prediction" - actually a set of predictions - was a political event, not a scientific event. The warmists were warned by fellow scientists - mainly non-denialist "skeptics" - that the multiple inputs on and complexity of global temperatures made prediction especially over short and medium time frames a crap shoot at best, even granting all AGW assumptions. The conservative AGW prediction can only ever be a relative increase in temperature over the course of time - temperatures will be n degrees higher than they would have been otherwise. If other factors happen to be causing relative cooling - a distinct possibility - then it would be canceled out.
An additional layer of complication, and of danger, is that the atmosphere and the ocean would react differently in the theoretical framework of the greenhouse effect. The acidification of the oceans, an effect of CO2 independent of temperature effects, would be occurring at the same time. No one knows exactly the effects of a warmer, more acidic ocean. Could be catastrophic. Could be wonderful. Could be a non-event. We may be about to find out. It's not alarmist to consider the possibilities, ask for further work and review, and set up a process for coping with whatever results.
Since there is so much uncertainty about the temperature prediction, it is, indeed, a rather weak reed on which to rest a worldwide multi-zillion dollar freedom and economy encumbering program, even if - additional layer of uncertainty - the harms predicted by some warmists would indeed come to pass under warmer-than-historical temperatures. Another reason why you don't have to pre-emptively decapitate the worldwide scientific establishment - a rather un-conservative project - in order to argue against alarmism.
One does not have to disprove every paragraph in Das Kapital to reject the tory; it’s enough to show that the immiseration of the proletariat hasn’t happened.
An argument about Marxism? Perish the thought! But you have provided a good example of a one-sided argument that makes zero impression on someone actually versed in the subject. You don't have to be Marxist or to be sympathetic to Marxists to acknowledge that numerous very intelligent and sophisticated people have been busy at Marxism and Marxian projects for generations, and to suspect - indeed, safely assume - that somewhere or another one or two of them might have run across the same thought that you came up with.
There is a vast worldwide "proletariat" whose immiseration has been truly impressive. Marxists began to shift their attention to the global economy generations ago.
Working from a conservative point of view that pays attention to incentives, I would say that getting Mark Levin to modify his tone will have little effect, even if it were possible.
Who said anything about getting Mark Levin to do anything? Good luck in that effort! The discussion was about a mode of argument and thought that's intellectually and politically dysfunctional and counterproductive vs. another that's constructive and "epistemically open."
to the extent that Manzi has a substantive criticsm of Levin is to the extent that Levin actually does or fails to do what Manzi claims unambiguously (“wingnuttery”) that Levin does and fails to do, namely, he attacks the weakest AGW argument, not the strongest.
Neither Levin nor Manzi is in a position to judge the science. They are in a position only to communicate to the reader the state of the discussion as they understand it: Almost any argument either makes will in the end come down to a more or less persuasive presentation of authorities.
Instead of glossing Manzi's and Levin's posts, I'll refer to one point of contention: The AGW petition that Manzi accuses Levin of mischaracterizing - both its endorsements and its content. Manzi argues that the endorsers aren't impressive, and are in some known cases quite suspect, and that the number given is inflated. He then argues that, anyway, the petition text doesn't say what Levin implies it says:
And most important by far, the text of the petition is not close to Levin’s claim of rejecting the notion of man-made global warming. In the key sentence it says that signatories do not believe that there is compelling scientific evidence that human release of greenhouse gases will cause catastrophic heating and disruption of the earth’s climate. Depending on the definition of “catastrophic,” I could agree to that. Yet I don’t reject the notion of man-made global warming.
(emphasis added)
Of the two arguments - endorsers, content - the first is obviously weaker, because it's impossible to prove that there were no qualified signatories. Manzi's arguments might stand as suggestive of Levin's bias, but, without proof of systematic fraud and of Levin withholding knowledge of same, would be unlikely to make the case. On the other hand, the second argument destroys the whole point of Levin's having introduced the petition in the first place, since, rather than adopting a hard anti-AGW position, the signatories are instead merely adopting a position that a believer in AGW could also adopt.
In replying, Levin focuses entirely on the first argument, and ignores the second one, even though Manzi has (properly) declared it "most important by far." After some more derisive comments and attempts to associate Manzi with the GW alarmists whom Manzi has explicitly separated himself from, Levin slides on to the next topic. This mischaracterization of Manzi as alarmist parallels the mischaracterization of the petition. It bypasses the opponent's strength by again refusing to distinguish between radicals and moderates. IN the first case, the petition signers, Levin wanted them all on his side, so he equates all moderates with denialists. In the second case, he wants to argue against Enviro-Statis kooks, so he associates the non-denialist skeptic Manzi with alarmists.
Aside from having nothing to do with a search for truth, Levin's approach is totally unpersuasive. All of his conclusions could be correct - about the GW discussion or about Manzi or both - but he adopts methods unlikely to persuade anyone who isn't either already persuaded or prejudiced in Levin's favor. He gives the distinct impression of someone determined to arrive at a specific conclusion - GW wrong, Manzi wrong - and ready to ignore, minimize, or mischaracterize anything that might cause someone else to doubt that conclusion. And that exemplifies what we have been calling "epistemic closure."
@ narciso:
If anyone makes a comment that you find offensive or otherwise "bad for the blog," you're welcome to contact me directly or to say as much. A ca. 500-word comment devoted entirely to attacking another commenter here - rather than a public personality - is rather unprecedented.
I'm not sure if you read the sentences that I deleted. Can we at least agree that vulgar sexual insults should simply be unacceptable?
The role of personal invective in closing down discussion may be on-topic after all.
I just read your long attack on strangelet, Joe. I've faulted her for poor manners and questioned her ideas, but that crude bit at the end was offensive, and I've exercised my prerogative/accepted my responsibility to delete it.
Since you mainly stick to substantive - if largely off-topic - discussion, since you seem to have put some work into the comment, and since, as noted, strangelet is often quite antagonistic, I'm reluctant to delete the entire comment merely out of my own discomfort with it and the example it sets. I'd still like to request that all participants refrain from making personal attacks on anyone who comments here, "asked for" or not.
@ Joe NS:
I'm familiar with your positions, Joe. You know much more about physics than I do. However, I don't really consider you an authority on GW and related fields, and there wouldn't be much point in your trying to persuade me of your position, since, upon my next intellectual encounter with someone whose credentials I consider at least as good as yours, I would be compelled, if I'm simply going by authority, to adopt that person's opinon, until the next encounter, and so on. One other alternative - the one that human nature often leads us to adopt - is to believe the authority whose conclusions best fit our prejudices. Another alternative is to concentrate on the authority whose conclusions most discomfort us, in the interest of testing ourselves against the challenge to our pre-conceived notions.
As Manzi points out in one of his posts, we do have processes set up for approximating the best authoritative opinion on scientific questions of political relevance. If there is something wrong with that process, then that might be one place where the energy of a scientifically unqualified observer might best be applied, and where scientists and non-scientists can meet on equal terms.
1. The Pew poll you cite is Pre-Climategate & Pre-Health Care. I would suggest that those numbers are completely irrelevent today, if anything…liberal/conservative numbers might be polar opposites. Frankly, there has been an ideological tectonic shift in the last year.
Could be. Could be wishful thinking. Might take more like a major astronomical collision rather than a mere tectonic shift to change those numbers radically.
2. Manzi’s proposal for responding to alleged Global crises assumes that Conservatives don’t follow his grand strategy already. I would suggest that the essence of Climategate is that the left has been the purveyors of the closed-feedback loop, intransigent and immobile. There is no need to debate the issue here and now, my point is that when discussing climate, it is the right that approaches it with an open mind and the left that has retreated to the ivory tower. See Wattsupwiththat.com, ClimateAudit.com or noconsensus.wordpress.com as good examples of conservative thinkers, scientists and statisticians trying to get to the truth.
You 100% sure that the authors at those fine web sites (well the 2 out of 3 I'm familiar with and have in the past discussed or linked) are political conservatives at all, much less American political conservatives? Could be some are. If they are - and to be clear I see no reason why they couldn't be conservative - they represent one sophisticated wing of the movement. I support their work. I suspect Manzi does as well. I also know of at least one important and influential non-denialist scientist who features McIntyre's work prominently in the sections of his book that deal with GW (Richard Muller, see above). I'm all in favor of good scientific work, or good work checking up on scientists.
3. Speaking of the next Hurricane cycle…and this is CRUCIAL, ***Last week Dr. Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, again an IPCC lead Hurricane AGW author finally crossed the Rubicon, http://is.gd/bzKBV In fact she appears to blame the left of exactly the kind of closed-mindedness you attribute to the right.
[...] nevertheless it is clear that over the last 4 months she has reached the conclusion that The right is intellectually open…the left is inflexible & closed.
As for Dr Curry, her statement at your link begins with the following sentence: "First, I’m not sure why we are talking about 'sides' (that tribalism thing); we should be talking about science and how to improve the integrity of science."
And yet somehow you turn that around into a support for one "side" over the other.
4. So is the Right really closed minded?
***
Where did Manzi or I describe "the right" as "closed-minded"?
One form of closed-mindedness - or ideological defensiveness - is to turn specific criticisms into generalizations on no apparent basis. It suggests a kind of paranoia. It's also typical of the Levin counter-attack on Manzi, incidentally, in which he continually associates Manzi with the worst of the warmists, and argues as though anyone who isn't a radical denialist is a sellout and accomplice of the etc. etc. etc.
Manzi (CATO Institute, NRO contributor) and I both are "of the right," so it would make no sense for us, and others who think like either or both of us, to attribute monolothic ideological discipline to "the right." It would be equally absurd to make the left into such a monolith - though I see the practice constantly, and see it in your comment as well.
Jim Manzi criticized Mark Levin and described how a certain approach to a certain topic in his view exemplified a kind of "epistemic closure." That's it. He thinks it's bad. So do I. I pointed out that, in addition, the e.c. attack seemed to strike a nerve, and that, rightly or wrongly, scientists and intellectuals seem generally to feel more comfortable on the left - by large margins. That may change by itself - or the process may be worth helping along as much as we can.
I don't really see what the point of the whole GW skeptic section is in relation to this particular discussion, though it's a useful set of reference points. Some on the right, perhaps including Manzi, might associate themselves with that kind of skepticism. Others are less skeptical - they might be closer to the view of a scientist like Richard Muller, whose views on GW I attempted to summarize in a comment above. Others go much further, however - and even seem to feel the need to denounce or ridicule those who dare to suggest that there may some serious issues worth looking at in relation to GW/greenhouse effect/CO2, even if the warmist program and the manner in which it was developed are deeply flawed.
5. Lastly, If we take Manzi’s proposition at face value…that Conservatives live in an echo chamber-devoid of reason and closed off from dialogue, debate and reality
***
Where did Manzi say that? Again, see above.
My point here is that perhaps the idealism of Manzi, may not always be the best approach.
I'd prefer not to generalize about Rush, Hannity, et al, and am myself from time to time one of "the guys at HotAir," though if you mean Ed and AP, I don't see them as the "same" as Levin, or the same as Drudge.
I also wonder if it's accurate to describe Manzi as the "idealist" in this discussion. Perhaps in some regards - if it's "idealism" to hold out any hope for our political system, if it's "idealism" to believe in the existence of relatively uncorrupted scientists worth listening to. If that's idealism, then it seems odd to me to use it as a pejorative - connoting a woeful lack of realism - as you seem to, when you yourself take conspicuous pride in the example of scientists who you believe have come over to your "side." Otherwise, if you don't hold out any hope for the political system - then go find a bomb vest.
I didn't spend much time in the top post discussing either Manzi or Levin's posts in detail, so I'll say here, because it seems relevant, that I think what spoke to me most directly about Manzi's was his description of examining the work of a popularizer/polemicist like Levin writing about something that he, Manzi, had studied, and having the experience, I paraphrase, of thinking "if this guy can be so bad on this subject, how can I trust him on any subject?" I've had that same experience many times with other figures - Glenn Beck comes to mind, Jonah Goldberg unfortunately, though less often - and I imagine that part, not all, of the explanation for those Pew and Murray numbers might be versions of that same experience multiplied many times over, over and over again, helped along by the kind of blanket assault on the integrity and interests of scientists and intellectuals that one encounters constantly in the trenches on the right.
Speaking in favor of reaching out to scientists and intellectuals and persuadable centrists and leftists, of trying to understand them and their motivations and how they see themselves, of constructing a program that makes sense to more of them, etc., is treated as some kind of foul betrayal by some on the right - amidst statements of proud ignorance and anger at anyone willing to point out that the anti-consensus consensus is as false as the consensus ever was. Just check out the thread at HotAir under my post - or virtually any thread under one of my posts at HotAir lately - or the discussion under the Karl post on this subject. It's bad enough wherever it's encountered, and if unopposed, it tends to take over whatever forum it appears in - and it makes the right look bad, harms the conservative project politically, and makes it more difficult for conservatives to develop better ideas and more effective arguments.
It doesn't matter whether the left is worse or not - no one is in a position to make an objective determination anyway, but what if you could? It still doesn't help conservatives, to be ideologically and emotionally closed-minded, however many or few the description applies to.
@ After Seven:
Thanks for your substantial and thoughtful reply, and sorry it was caught in the pending queue for a couple of hours. I've got to run, be back later - Gaia willing.
Highlander….idc what your base thinks.
Its not my responsiblility to educate them….its yours.
My base? I don't pretend to represent anyone but whichever clique of neural subsystems happen to have won control of my verbal apparatus.
And I apologize for dropping the genocide/eugenics bomblet on you, but I was trying to make a point. As for Palin, for whomever the references were intended, you inserted them here. As I think I made clear way up above somewhere, I do think her and her following can be quite relevant to this discussion, but probably to no good purpose at daggers drawn.
i have never advocated genocide, even for the intransigently stupid.
linkage please?
ensoulment of diploid oocytes
Since you cop to eugenicism, I'll focus on your skeptical use of the above phrase, which implies a negation of the "right to life" of human beings extended to conception. The moral position that you deny, or refuse to respect (violently I anticipate), is extended by those who hold this moral position to encompass all human beings, at all stages of development, with the understanding that putting oneself in the position to deny the the humanity (here equated with the possession of a soul) of one category of human being makes it possible to deny by parallel logic the humanity of other categories of human being.
We don't need to divert into some interminable discussion of right-to-choose/right-to-life - though it happens to be on this subject that I best recall Unger's presentation of apparently irreconcilable worldviews, mentioned above. My point was that when you attach a baggage train of issues to an already adequately controversial subject, you needlessly impair further dialogue, seeming to confirm the suspicions of those whom you are presumably trying to reach that it's all a scam, a bait and switch, and that compromise on this issue will send them, per your fiendish designs, pell-mell down the slippery slope to Brave New World, at best.
Not sure why this isn't obvious to you. Same-same on bringing la Palin into this confrontationally - another invitation to go round and round on familiar ground with no known or yet-demonstrated exit.
The so-called “scientific process” has been corrupted and coopted by what we may call the grantmaker-academic complex.
To the extent that your description is accurate, then the critique should be framed as pro-science and pro-scientific process, and the situation you describe would have to be understood as an elemental threat to science and to scientists. As I suggested somewhere above, an appeal to the self-interest of scientists eventually coincides with an appeal to their ethics - since the Chicken Little/Cried Wolf feedback on events like Climategate can eventually imperil the scientific project. Even if bad luck led to the apparent validation of Chicken Little-ism, that would be even worse for scientists, since it would reinforce the position of a non-skeptical, anti-scientific, politicized/bureaucratized elite against the ethical and practical interests of true scientists, while also making them even more vulnerable to some future catastrophic event.
The GW argumentation advanced by alarmists can be applied to the scientific project itself: If there is an ecological crisis, it equally or perhaps to a greater extent may infect the scientific project, as any understanding of ecology should lead one to expect from the outset. The alarmists have been, in short, pursuing a non-ecological response to a putatively ecological problem. Luckily for conservatives, it doesn't appear necessary to explain this abstract concept to the general public - though the g.p. may have intuited it anyway - because the contradiction appears materially in the disconnect between threats-described and measures-proposed (Kyoto etc.), and responsibility-demanded and responsibility-shown (Climategate).
Additionally - skepticism of scientists and of the scientific process is integral to scientists and the scientific process - which is why there's nothing inherently unscientific about conservatism, and why science and intellectual labor generally, properly understood, are or ought to be at least as conservative as they are liberal, and also why, up until recently from the historical point of view, the conservative bias of science and scholarship tended to be much more prominent in any characterization of the relevant establishments and institutions.
@ strangelet:
Hi, strange. It's nice to have something to agree about for once.
I thought it was the Pew Poll you were endlessly citing, not the Murray graph, but either way I noted your comment at the American Scene post and would endorse it if only you could manage to avoid your needlessly abrasive language and eugenicist/genocidalist baggage. Conservatives attempting to force GW-denialism or any other form of anti-science populism on a public that prefers, or should prefer, an attitude of impartial objectivity and "openness" are seeking to cross a bridge too far. Whatever-you-are's who want to force spiritual/moral denialism are attempting the same crossing from the other side.
@ adam:
I feel that that's a one-sided, one might say classically one-sided, view of the situation. The Left has its claims against the Right, too, and the claim and counter-claim will go on forever along the Unger-Simmel model: We seek to discover the points of fruitful connection or contiguity between apparently irreconcilable viewpoints, but if we fail to reach and generalize them intellectually, the world will still resolve them materially. It's the role of the political system to manage the material or objective reconciliation of contradictions with the least possible violence - and least practicable impairment of future reconciliation.
My assumption isn't that the immoralities balance out fairly, only that life goes on, or at least has gone on so far. The American system, as in my view the authentically conservative position on the American system, doesn't assume perfect solutions - to the contrary, it makes them virtually impossible and seems to be based on the assumption of their impossibility and of the undesirability of any other assumption.
@ Joe NS:
No - a democratic political system can't be about deciding whether GW is real or not. Only nature can do that. If the GW-ists persuade enough people to feel strongly enough that it's worth the time, energy, resources, inconveniences, moral compromises, etc., then all that time, energy, etc. will be forthcoming, whether or not it was all based on a fiction. If a durable majority of our fellow citizens decide that believing in that fiction gives meaning to their lives, the rest of us will sooner or later be forced to stand back as they kneel down, whether we like it or not.
Preventing this from happening will certainly include arguments on the science, but the political equation is something different. When a large segment of the citizenry and our major international allies feel urgency about an issue, then our political life is being held hostage to a hearing of their complaints, concerns, and recommendations that is generally accepted as fair. Conservatives continue to win on this issue precisely because the warmists are so far from providing a practical means of achieving their end that doesn't also kill the hostage.
@ adam:
I think the place that we have to resist commenters is when they say that the discussion has moved on and it's time to say one last thing! These are Zombie Contentions, man - they never die.
As for conclusions already inscribed in arguments, I think you could go down the list of issues and formulate typical left or right positions in such a way that the outcome was pre-determined by respective modes of discussion. That was part of Unger's point, as we were discussing some weeks ago. It begins to look impossible to resolve an issue like abortion, for instance, because the world view of the person arguing it from the pro-choice side is already at odds with the world view of the pro-lifer.
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.
In a cosmopolitan setting such conflicts and compromises multiply astronomically, as Georg Simmel pointed out. It's hard to be a saint in the city.
Note: Thanks to everyone - everyone - for their input. I enjoyed the discussion and it also helped me recognize some things that I could and should discard in the post, which has now been cut down by around a third. If I keep on hacking at it, I might end up discarding the whole thing - but then we'd lose the thread...
The riskiest thing is to impair that power of improvisation.
Agreed - which I believe qualifies as a corollary to Manzi's proposed grand strategy. In other works he's also factored in geo-engineering proposals. I think the work that got the most attention, however, was where he calculated the on-the-charts worst case scenario of total cost of GW, and showed that it would have a much smaller impact on world GDP than the main CO2-mitigation schemes. As for the off-the-charts super-alarmist scenarios, he has shown how they have to be addressed. Speculative geo-engineering proposals play a role here, too. If I were Joe Scientist, I could get totally on board. Someone somewhere needs to calculate, with total cynicism, assuming a direct correlation between socio-economic rewards and scientific "results," but with attention to Chicken Little feedback effects (e.g., Climategate), a "sustainable" path for scientific economic development - i.e., how under a conservative grand strategy all those greedy wards of the superstate will, over the middle and long term, do better than if they cause a tragedy of the scientific commons overfeeding at the AGW trough.
their imput doesn’t get
into the textbooks, or the audiovisual supplements, are scrubbed from Wikipedia.
I'm sorry, but that's flat wrong or at least greatly exaggerated and unnecessarily defeatist. I've just finished reading PHYSICS FOR FUTURE PRESIDENTS, awarded the (oh no!) Pulitzer Prize, written by a tenured professor at Berkeley (OMG!), and it addresses several of the topics you raise from a conservative-congenial perspective. The book was published in 2008, paperback last year. On GW, the author is quietly devastating on Gore, predicts something like Climategate biting the alarmists (though I don't recall him using the term) in the ass, produces ample stats and charts demonstrating the ridiculousness of Kyoto-like pseudo-solutions. There is nothing about this book - or its respected, popular, peer-reviewing, public-serving, eminent professor-author - to be afraid of unless you're such a committed denialist that you refuse even to consider the opinion of someone willing to present the GW case dispassionately, although he seems to think that ocean acidification may turn out to be a much bigger problem than GW. He therefore favors some kind of carbon credit scheme to encourage India and China to convert to carbon sequestration as soon as practicable.
He's far from an alarmist, however, and, as I said, far from un-critical of the GW movement. I would be, overall, quite comfortable if I learned that a conservative administration pursuing a Manzi-like "grand strategy" appointed him as a top science adviser.
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.
That's the point, Adam. In pursuing a "my hysteria is more hysterical than your hysteria" + "science bad" approach to AGW or any other issue, conservatives are contributing to all of those problems, when a scientifically open, unafraid, inquiry-encouraging approach with a focus on rational risk assessment/management (something Manzi is quite good on, incidentally) offers an excellent position, arguably the commanding policy heights, for conservatives to seek to occupy.
@ narciso:
Who's "they" in your comment? Many science- and intellect-positives are quite open to the arguments you allude to. To me, your comment suggests the common rhetorical practice of imagining a monolith on the other side, then demanding one on your own to oppose it, the main effect of which is to drive the opposition together and scare off those in the middle, in a political self-fulfilling prophecy spiral.
So even if Levin’s chapter wasn’t up to Manzi’s high standard of scientific purity, Levin was still right and the chapter is still old.
I have to disagree with you there: Levin's chapter wasn't up to much of any standard, and Manzi's standard isn't one of scientific purity: It's one of treating oneself, the opponent, and observers with intellectual respect, in the interest of getting at a better approximation of the truth. The great polemicists - Burke, Lincoln in his political speeches and debates - are able to lay claim to understanding their opponents arguments as well, or better, than their opponents do. They can take the opponent and the audience through them logically to their own polemical purposes. In some cases, the method requires the polemicist to make a better case for the opponent than the opponent is able to make.
Put differently, at the current relative low point politically for GW-ists, the coalition of Denialists + Unsure Realists + Believing Realists is bigger than the coalition of Alarmists. By insisting on a Denialist line, the right risks building an opposing majority made up of the other 3 groups. If you watched the British debate the other day, btw, you can see that whatever the state of things here, the "GW consensus" seems alive and well among our allies. An unusually hot year or two, a bad hurricane or flood, and the momentum may shift right back. If the public grows convinced, rightly or wrongly, today or ten years from today, that the GW-ists were right, then say hello to all sorts of things you think you've beaten.
@ 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.
@ Ken:
Well, though I don't much care for Brooks and Frum, I think I can get my mind around where they are and why. Since, as noted elsewhere, it's National Poetry Month - here's Robert Burns:
Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel’s as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.
http://www.bartleby.com/100/315.19.html
You mention your own squelched discomfort with a statement to the effect that the Constitution is based on the Bible, and I like very much your interpretation of what you believe the Founders meant by "God-given." You're probably aware, however, that there's a significant and vocal current of very public conservative comrades who are rather militant, at least verbally, about putting the Big Guy up front first and foremost, among other things because they expect to earn the appreciation of religious people who are happy to see God spoken of, and approvingly, in public. Thus, you rarely hear a mention of "natural rights" from them without an underlining gesture "from God." Belief in God (expressed as such) nearly equals belief in America or authentic constitutional Americanism in this discourse.
I've always thought that a key to Huckabee's persistent appeal was in the same phenomenon, and likewise Palin's and Bush 43's: Their other stands or acts are almost secondary compared to their willingness and ability to "testify" - an act of no little value in independent protestant/evangelical traditions (part of the very meaning of "evangelism"). Conversely, no matter how intimately Romney embraced the social conservative agenda, and no matter how consistently McCain voted a social conservative line, their inability or reluctance to evangelize made them suspect. Beck is able to circumvent Romney's problem because he's not running for anything and isn't subjected to scrutiny in the same way: In my own limited sampling of religious Beck fans, few have any idea at all that he was raised a Mormon (I have no idea whether he's observant).
But to bring us back to scientists, intellectuals, and Robert Burns, when they hear the testimony, many hear - or believe they have reason to hear - a threat or at best a lost cause. This doesn't need to be the case at all, and it's a shame that Pope Benedict's rather brilliant defense of reason in a religious context hasn't obtained wider circulation. But overcoming the prejudice from this stratum, which our occasional visitor strangelet is always happy to put forward in the most abrasive manner possible, may require some effort.
@ Ken:
I believe that the Pew Poll - you can check the link - is focused on what you might consider "real" scientists. The softies who fall under the general category of intellectual elite may not be as credible on science-related issues, obviously, but over time they may be even more influential on opinion formation, on setting the bounds of allowable discourse, even on what people mean when they report that they're "conservative." I just don't think it serves conservatives well to be complacent, or constantly to be complaining that life's just not fair.
@ After Seven:
1. Pew Numbers:
No reason simply to assume that closing the overall generic ballot gap in the broad population will have greatly affected the numbers among scientists - even if you don't rely on the excuses commonly offered previously that scientists are overly influenced by a combination of groupthink and self-interest.
We'll just have to wait and see whether conservative self-identification among scientists has greatly increased. Maybe it's even doubled! To... 16%... (From minuscule to merely desperately small...)
2. Left more "closed" than the right - could well be. I acknowledged as much from the top. Why should that be an excuse for the anti-intellectualism and extreme closed-mindedness exhibited by Levin and other popular hard right conservatives? If the perception that conservatives are closed-minded on some topics is false, though somewhat prevalent, then one way, among others, to dispense with it is to subject closed-minded offerings to criticism.
Conservatives want to think of themselves as more open-minded and non-ideological in their thinking and beliefs than liberals. That sets a higher burden before them. Merely acting on a blinkered assumption of open-mindedness isn't enough.
3. You continue to want to recruit Dr. Curry to the right. Until Dr. Curry herself has made the avowals and confessions, you do her a service, or perhaps a disservice, but the conclusion remains premature. You have no idea whether, say, Dr. Curry voted for Barack Obama and would do so again. That she criticizes and may have broken with a nominally non-partisan outfit that you associate with the left is not a greatly significant political fact, unless you believe that there are not and cannot be intellectually, morally, and financially corrupt institutions and individuals of the right.
Unfortunately, in the trenches, including this trench, I see plentiful evidence of closed minds on the right - especially those individuals who persist in the entirely un-conservative framing of a scientific question so that one set of answers must qualify as conservative, the others as liberal. That's a position worthy of Joseph Stalin, not William F Buckley.
4. You again speculate that an external event - now passage of HCR - might greatly alter the Pew Poll results. For all we know, HCR may have driven a large section of merely rather liberal scientists into the hard liberal or ultra- liberal camps. We just don't know and can't know until we do know.
The breakdown of the AAAS membership is irrelevant to the Pew Poll, which was designed to asses political affinities of scientists, not AAAS' broad membership. Specifically:
I don't see why you would want to exclude student members of the AAAS, on the other hand, in whatever numbers they made up the sample, in an effort to assess attitudes among scientists. They are presumably grad students, possibly including some undergraduates in the sciences, not kindergartners.
Your C argument runs up its own posterior: That AAAS does liberal things offers anecdotal evidence for the proposition that AAAS is as liberal as the poll indicates. You wouldn't expect an 8% conservative organization to be purchasing state rooms on the National Review cruise.
Your D argument is more self-serving speculation. You're asking me to take your "hypotheses" about what a theoretically better poll might show against the bona fides of Pew Research. In other words, on this topic as well as others, when a respected organization produces data you don't like, they're "garbage." Their data and methodology are open for all to see and to make of what anyone will. Their results happen to conform to anecdotal evidence and to other polling regarding the state of political opinion and affinities in the scientific community. Your speculation, on the other hand, merely conforms to your wishful thinking. Excuse me, but I'll take Pew over "After Seven" for now, without assuming that Pew is the end of the discussion or immune from criticism.
As for Murray's graph, it illustrates a certain peculiar trend that Mr. Murray, among others, found impressive. No one attached the one-sidedness to the results that you do. Not only am I "open to the possibility that there are thousands, perhaps even millions... of open-minded conservatives," I presume as much, and use Manzi as an example of the species. The Murray graph appears to reflect a trend, it doesn't portray a monolith.
As for whether conservatives "intentionally and reflexively deride science and intellectuals," am I to assume that you do not consider Mark Levin a conservative? Going back for a very long time, many conservatives have been complained about scientism. In the wake of the (A)GW debates, the claim that science has been corrupted has become common, and is thrown around in such a way that, if I were a scientist, I might well find offensive. The misuse and abuse of scientific proceedings occurs on both sides.
5. You claim that conservatives all follow the part of the Manzi suggestion that you find intelligible, and then you proceed to contradict it in your further explication, importing every manner of "I hate liberals" into what is a narrow discussion: Should conservatives, on the question of GW, be advocating for one "side" of the scientific question, or should they be advocating a conservative approach to the scientific question in its political dimensions?
6. The statement of mine that you quote describes "some" conservatives. You go on to concede that three of the most popular conservatives in the country (supported, incidentally, by legions of ditto-ing followers) might justify my description, and yet choose to take offense on behalf of others unnamed.
The reason that I offer no proof of some monolithic conservative anti-scientific closed-mindedness is that I made no claim of a monolithic conservative anti-scientific closed-mindedness.
Seeking offense by exaggerating the statements of others is, however, a good example of one mechanism that often supports "epistemic closure" on the part of some conservatives (as well as some liberals).
7. The main point as to the politicization of science is discussed above. Some scientific matters have clearly become political to some conservatives. Just check this comment thread or, even better, the comment thread over at HotAir, for clear evidence that some conservatives are appalled even at the suggestion that GW-related issues should be assessed without pre-judgment.
8. We have no way of determining objectively what the divergence of the Murray stratum from the rest of the population means. Maybe the other trend lines would be even more pronounced in conservatives' favor if the Intellectual Uppers weren't fighting against them. Maybe the other trend lines help drive the Intellectual Uppers further away. There are lots of possibilities.
Even if there was no important political or practical problem or risk involved - I think there might be, as outlined in the top post - I take it as a given that it would be better for the intellectuals themselves (and their students and acolytes) as well as for larger society if they were more open to conservative ideas and insights, if they were exploring and extending conservative approaches in culture, politics, administration, and so on, if they were contributing financially and personally to conservative causes or at worst relatively neutral. We might have a richer and more dynamic culture - a good in itself - and better science and intellectual work, too.
Maybe, for example, the elite media (intellectual uppers par excellence), if less skewed ideologically, would do a better job of exposing supposedly moderate and open-minded presidential candidates for the ideological leftist they are, rather than participating in a sham, thus better enabling a right-trending populace to make a properly informed decision.
narciso wrote:
I sit doubly shocked, shocked (or would that be quadruply shocked?), first that a film with Olga Kurylenko would get dissed at ZC, second that y'all ain't positively responding to the fact that the evil bad guy was an eco-fraud! And pre-Climategate! Obviously I found the brutal violence and the utterly absurd parachute escape, and inferno art climax more diverting, but y'all are being hard cases. Now I've got to do some work so play nice while I'm gone, and never say NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN again.
@ J.E. Dyer:
I use GW to refer to the broad policy issue. In my view there are, in theory, a wide range of possible combinations of actual-GW, possible-GW, actual-AGW, possible-AGW, in varying proportions. We could conclude or learn, for example, that there had been no recent AGW to the 95% confidence level (the widely mischaracterized Phil Jones "retraction" was of this character), but that at radically higher concentrations of CO2, AGW could kick in with a vengeance. We could conclude or learn that we were in a cyclical natural warming trend, but that human intervention could counteract whatever damaging effects, or that at some point AGW could make it worse. We could conclude that there was no GW, or even that there was Global Cooling, but that AGW was not just possible, but desirable. There are endless possibilities.
Certainly all participants in public discussion will sooner or later end up referring to authorities and their own logic - a fully qualified scientist refers to the "authority" of experimental results and the logic of analysis - but when citizen JED rises up to say that the Hockey Stick's a joke, she's always implicitly saying "authority A plus evidence B by way of logic train C has led me to conclude that HS is a joke." The power of her assertion is that, a free citizen of evident intelligence, she has become a full-blown skeptic. The political question is how much weight to give to the voices of skeptical citizens in the process - on all sides.
In the effort to add to that weight on our own side, assuming we have one, any of us is in a position to make, quoting Manzi's original Levin post, "a fundamental argument that proceeds from evidence available for common inspection through a defined line of logic to a scientific view." In the public dimension, quoting Manzi's reply post, where he imagines a political leader attempting to make a responsible decision in the face of disagreement on facts, the parallel process is "gather together a group of the leading subject-matter experts to produce a review of known science, and subject it to review by a standing body of leading scientists who are not directly in the field in order to minimize both groupthink and opportunities for self-dealing." He goes on briefly to describe the current process for achieving same.
It was to the second suggestion that McCarthy responded, in essence, "Go away, kid, you bother me." That won't be acceptable to all of the evidently intelligent citizens who have come out on the other side from you.
@ narciso:
I don't really care what someone like me - or you - thinks about GW. It's like asking me to go to bat against major league pitching. I know only enough about science to get things comically wrong and to be misled, pretty much.
I do know something about discourse, and I've learned a little bit about political science over the years, and, as an American I have as much right as anyone else, expert or doofus, to weigh in on whether the political process looks fair, and whether participants in the discussion are performing credibly.
@ J.E. Dyer:
I find you to be a Daniel Craig denialist.
Daniel Craig is the best Bond. CASINO ROYALE (2006) is the best Bond film. QUANTUM is better than the vast majority of other Bond films.
This is simply the truth, and that so many live in denial would sadden me if I wasn't used to that kind of thing by now.
And this is why it's an epistemological, or perhaps borderline epistemological question. The questions are a) how do or can they know that to be true?; and b) how can the public, we, come to accept that truth?
The first goes to what process for determining the truth they undertake and demonstrate. It can be criticized, and we are free to take or leave what they say, to consult other authorities or analysts of authorities, and form our own opinions.
As for the second, if the manner of argumentation and presentation leaves an unbiased observer with as much or more reason to doubt that process as to trust it, or to prefer someone else's process, then McCarthy or Levin's "truth" is the proverbial tree falling in the forest, no one being inclined to listen. Blown up to the level of public policy, that suggests an authority-gathering and -testing process with error-checking.
As Manzi points out in his "apology" post, we have such processes already in place. If they need to be improved, then improving or, in the extreme, replacing them - for the sake of a process that's more resistant to self-interest and other forms of corruption - is something that non-experts on the underlying scientific questions can fruitfully pursue. Let Lindzen, Lomborg, Muller, and Joe all give their skeptical inputs, but there is no reason for Weitzman, Mann, Jones, or Barack Obama to trust the process if it begins with a pre-determined result, and if all participants aren't somewhat assured that the "losers" will abide by the results, while retaining whatever agreed-upon future opportunities to amend.
You, JED, like Joe and others here are GW skeptics. I think you could be fairly termed "denialists," for the sake of discussion, once we remove any pejorative connotation from the term: You deny that GW is a problem. We can likewise define "alarmists" simply as people who are "alarmed" by what they have come to believe about GW. (Of course, the alarmists are also denialists in the sense that they deny the denialists, and the denialists tend to be alarmed about the alarmists, but we'll avoid moving on to such arguments on the second order and beyond, mainly because we accept going in that everyone has a right to deny or set alarms in a free society, without being pre-judged for his or her denial or alarm.)
McCarthy in one of his responses to Manzi presumes the denialist position when he says, essentially, "GW isn't a big enough deal for me to be bothered about it when we have wars to fight, an economy to rescue, and political sanity to restore." That's what prompts Manzi to ask, "How do you know it's not a big deal?" How can you or we know or come to accept that it's not a big deal? That's when this begins to become an epistemological or borderline epistemological question.
In the public sphere, the denialists can't be bothered, but the alarmists are super-bothered. A democratic system gives the alarmists a right to be heard without their claims being pre-judged. If they are successful in persuading enough people that the better course is to let them have their way, then they get their way.
Similarly, if a national consensus is reached that we need an income tax, that women deserve the right to vote, that alcoholic spirits should neither be sold nor consumed, that Communism is evil and must be fought, that underwear should be worn on the outside, and that the word "gravity" should never be uttered on prime time TV for the sake of public safety, then that's the way things are gonna go.
And if the losers on the underwear-on-the-outside controversy come to believe that it was a rigged game and that they and their children and their children's children will never have an opportunity to restore their briefs to where they belong, then the system becomes to that degree less credible and more vulnerable to eventual breakdown.
And that's why the political question isn't and can't be about GW per se, it's about how we decide issues like "the GW issue," including whether the GW issue deserves to be treated as an important issue, and whether that decision on the issue's importance needs to be reviewed, ad more or less infinitum.
@ Sully:
I believe I addressed the question of Manzi's tone - which I think probably should have been calibrated more carefully - something Manzi admits when he apologizes in his follow-up post. Otherwise, I think you're being a little oversensitive on Levin's behalf.
Anyway, intellectual respect is different from politeness. Sometimes they come into conflict. Taking an imbecile's ideas seriously may lead to embarrassing said imbecile.
"Closed-minded" was already proposed several times as an adequate plain talk synonym. However, to say someone is closed-minded doesn't tell you very much. Arguing, as strangelet does above, that the con elites merely pretend to be closed-minded in order to please the base, is a flexible and also not very revelatory charge - as if lib elites don't do the same thing? As if anyone in daily life doesn't withhold thoughts or feelings for the sake of not offending others, for whatever reasons, but in the end for reasons of self-interest?
I don't know if Sanchez has gone into detail about his reasons for using the specific term, but I think he wanted to put a post-structuralist spin on his critique of conservative "discourse," while keeping it somewhat grounded empirically in a description of the familiar conservative media complex. When he deploys the word "episteme," he summons Foucault to testify from the grave as follows:
The context was the discussion of the history of science, as a history of scientific discourses rather than a history of progressive discoveries, which Foucault in other works extended to other realms.
Sanchez's idea, apparently, was that conservatives more so than liberals - perhaps because driven into a "bunker" - are unable to process, even acknowledge the existence of certain kinds of evidence or argument. I would argue instead that to the extent anyone's "discourse" can be characterized as ideological, it is "epistemically closed" (I was saying something like this just the other day without the "e" word). The Marxists were here first, at least with the terminology, though it goes without saying that to the beginning of time, all discourses are defined as much by what they exclude as by what they contain. This apparently goes for theories of mathematics and cybernetic systems, as well. It also happens to be a theme of "the Latest Freed Man," a poem that gave great delight to a post-structuralist professor of mine back in the day.
To bring us back to the present topic, Levin and his partner in epistemic crime Andy McCarthy almost fall over themselves demonstrating their ideological closure. It is clear from word one, or nearly, that they would remain uninterested in global warming per se even up to the moment that the atmosphere itself exploded in flame. They have already decided that they'd rather the world came to an end than see a virtual world government telling people like them where to set their thermostats or how fast to drive. They would fight that to the death, just as during the Cold War they would have been prepared to see the world's great cities incinerated and the skies blackened with radioactive soot rather than give into SOVIET DOMINATION.
When induced actually to discuss this matter about which they are virtually incapable of caring very much, they will pursue familiar modes of selective perception and attention. These can be isolated and criticized, and are rather obvious to anyone not predisposed to agree with them. Can anyone read Levin and doubt that, while searching through authorities, if he found 10 supporting the GW case, he'd keep on reading until he found an 11th whose doubts could be inflated until they seemed to outweigh and overwhelm the 10 contradictory positions?
It may even be that #11 is more right than #s 1 to 10, but in a political context people who don't begin with Levin's biases and prejudices, and who are incapable of assessing the science for themselves, have to go on apparent credibility - perform their own discourse analysis by way of intuition. They may not be able to perform a Foucauldian or Derridean or Althusserian or wheoverian critique, but they can tell when someone ain't listening and ain't interested in listening. They can also often sense when someone else is selling them a bill of goods.
Into a state of uncertainty and anger, someone like Manzi comes along with sophisticated but fairly easily understandable, and logical, set of ideas about how to proceed to a less than perfect, but democratically supportable, testable, and criticizeable project. Conservatives should support it not just to reach the best decision on GW, or for the sake of extracting maximum political advantage from Climategate, but for the sake of the entire policy process, the good of scientists, and the good of all political participants.
J.E. Dyer wrote:
That's private.
@ strangelet:
Based on that rather pathetic but all too human college sex confessional thing - that I just looked up for the first time? I think you may be reading a tad bit much into it with the broken glass granny bit.
Odd that anyone would detest Douthat. I've actually grown to appreciate him more lately.
The "what was Manzi up to question" has led me to think a little bit more about the moment - the transition from populism-led conservative resurgence to the next conservative coalition, which may take longer than some would prefer, or might be accelerated by events. I may put together a post about it later.
I don't know how conscious Manzi was of specific intentions, and I'm not sure what difference it would make anyway, though it might tell you interesting things about Manzi. Conscious or not, it's a moment of potentially productive stress between elements of the conservative coalition, loosening the control of the likes of Levin and other substitute intellectuals on public speech and thought within the movement - a more mature and possibly less internecine version of the Frum/NRO split.
@ Rex Caruthers:
He had the potential to have been a terrific blogger - see 18th Brumaire... Fifth rate's a little harsh. Maybe we can agree he occasionally showed some symptoms of epistemic closure.
@ Rex Caruthers:
Additionally, as I'm sure you're well aware and as I expect Margo will also recall, once upon a time it was quite common, virtually the obligatory response among "thinking people," to say that the Depression was "proof" of the validity of Marxist economics - to say nothing of other more parochial and less widely disseminated "proofs." I think you've noted elsewhere that neo-Marxists can hardly restrain their glee and their sense of long-delayed validation in viewing the world's current economic difficulties.
I disagree, but, if you're right, Levin had a golden opportunity to turn Manzi's self-designated "most important argument" (on that point) against Manzi. Instead, Levin completely ignored it. He was too busy coming up with derisive jibes, apparently - just as you're very busy making, again, at length, arguments about AGW that are beyond the scope of Manzi's complaints against Levin. If Levin had made your arguments about AGW, in the way that you make them, then Manzi would have had a different post on Levin to put up, if any.
@ strangelet:
Manzi apologized, in a manner that looked to me to be quite sincere, for giving "offense," though he didn't specifically repent on the w-word - which was directed at Levin's work, not quite the same as being directed at Levin himself. In other words a non-wingnut might conceivably produce a work with elements of wingnuttery from time to time (even though the Bible does say that ye shall know them by their nuts).
I think it's plain what Manzi was attempting to do. Shake things up, following Douthat's "call." I think Manzi, as in the self-deprecating remark about going on in "excruciating detail" on the Krugman III post, is also conscious of the fact that he may sometimes go over people's heads, or fail to supply the drama that, say, a typical fan of Mark Levin feeds on, and that, as a result, his efforts to fight a drift into radicalism and closed-mindedness are sometimes ignored.
So the temptation is to put a little extra "oomph" in the ping just to make sure you get a reading back on the sonar. It was a bit daring - not storming a pillbox at Iwo Jima, but intellectually brave all the same - to take on "the Great One" at NRO, and in such terms. Precisely calibrating one's attack in such a situation - violent enough to make an impression, careful enough not to subvert itself - can be quite difficult, and sooner or later a writer may just say "to hell with it, here's my shot."
@ Joe NS:
Why would Manzi, in a critique narrowly focused on the mode of argumentation employed in a chapter of Levin's book, at a point more narrowly focused on a single argument deployed in that chapter, be obligated to assess the history of the IPCC reports and their endorsers?
Your comment is at 1290 words longer than Manzi's 1204-word post on Levin's book - yet manages only briefly to address the question under discussion here. You asked for an example of what I meant by Levin's failing to address Manzi's or other people's arguments at their strongest. I provided an example of Levin completely ignoring Manzi's "most important" argument, and instead focusing deceptively on his lesser argument. Levin's approach is disrespectful to Manzi, disrespectful to the reader, disrespectful to the subject, and disrespectful to himself. Protagoras can go fish.
For all I know, Levin was taking perverse pleasure in refusing to treat Manzi's argument on the terms in which Manzi advanced it. A partisan of Levin's might see some justification, since Manzi bushwhacked Levin. Unfortunately, as Manzi demonstrated, Levin doesn't need to be attacked "out of nowhere" to be found resorting to dishonest, deceptive, and diversionary tactics.
You use the discussion of the narrow example as an excuse to launch off into another disquisition on the meaning and history of AGW, AGW propaganda, and related/thinly related subjects. Maybe you should write a book.
Margo wrote:
The "prediction" - actually a set of predictions - was a political event, not a scientific event. The warmists were warned by fellow scientists - mainly non-denialist "skeptics" - that the multiple inputs on and complexity of global temperatures made prediction especially over short and medium time frames a crap shoot at best, even granting all AGW assumptions. The conservative AGW prediction can only ever be a relative increase in temperature over the course of time - temperatures will be n degrees higher than they would have been otherwise. If other factors happen to be causing relative cooling - a distinct possibility - then it would be canceled out.
An additional layer of complication, and of danger, is that the atmosphere and the ocean would react differently in the theoretical framework of the greenhouse effect. The acidification of the oceans, an effect of CO2 independent of temperature effects, would be occurring at the same time. No one knows exactly the effects of a warmer, more acidic ocean. Could be catastrophic. Could be wonderful. Could be a non-event. We may be about to find out. It's not alarmist to consider the possibilities, ask for further work and review, and set up a process for coping with whatever results.
Since there is so much uncertainty about the temperature prediction, it is, indeed, a rather weak reed on which to rest a worldwide multi-zillion dollar freedom and economy encumbering program, even if - additional layer of uncertainty - the harms predicted by some warmists would indeed come to pass under warmer-than-historical temperatures. Another reason why you don't have to pre-emptively decapitate the worldwide scientific establishment - a rather un-conservative project - in order to argue against alarmism.
An argument about Marxism? Perish the thought! But you have provided a good example of a one-sided argument that makes zero impression on someone actually versed in the subject. You don't have to be Marxist or to be sympathetic to Marxists to acknowledge that numerous very intelligent and sophisticated people have been busy at Marxism and Marxian projects for generations, and to suspect - indeed, safely assume - that somewhere or another one or two of them might have run across the same thought that you came up with.
There is a vast worldwide "proletariat" whose immiseration has been truly impressive. Marxists began to shift their attention to the global economy generations ago.
Who said anything about getting Mark Levin to do anything? Good luck in that effort! The discussion was about a mode of argument and thought that's intellectually and politically dysfunctional and counterproductive vs. another that's constructive and "epistemically open."
Neither Levin nor Manzi is in a position to judge the science. They are in a position only to communicate to the reader the state of the discussion as they understand it: Almost any argument either makes will in the end come down to a more or less persuasive presentation of authorities.
Instead of glossing Manzi's and Levin's posts, I'll refer to one point of contention: The AGW petition that Manzi accuses Levin of mischaracterizing - both its endorsements and its content. Manzi argues that the endorsers aren't impressive, and are in some known cases quite suspect, and that the number given is inflated. He then argues that, anyway, the petition text doesn't say what Levin implies it says:
(emphasis added)
Of the two arguments - endorsers, content - the first is obviously weaker, because it's impossible to prove that there were no qualified signatories. Manzi's arguments might stand as suggestive of Levin's bias, but, without proof of systematic fraud and of Levin withholding knowledge of same, would be unlikely to make the case. On the other hand, the second argument destroys the whole point of Levin's having introduced the petition in the first place, since, rather than adopting a hard anti-AGW position, the signatories are instead merely adopting a position that a believer in AGW could also adopt.
In replying, Levin focuses entirely on the first argument, and ignores the second one, even though Manzi has (properly) declared it "most important by far." After some more derisive comments and attempts to associate Manzi with the GW alarmists whom Manzi has explicitly separated himself from, Levin slides on to the next topic. This mischaracterization of Manzi as alarmist parallels the mischaracterization of the petition. It bypasses the opponent's strength by again refusing to distinguish between radicals and moderates. IN the first case, the petition signers, Levin wanted them all on his side, so he equates all moderates with denialists. In the second case, he wants to argue against Enviro-Statis kooks, so he associates the non-denialist skeptic Manzi with alarmists.
Aside from having nothing to do with a search for truth, Levin's approach is totally unpersuasive. All of his conclusions could be correct - about the GW discussion or about Manzi or both - but he adopts methods unlikely to persuade anyone who isn't either already persuaded or prejudiced in Levin's favor. He gives the distinct impression of someone determined to arrive at a specific conclusion - GW wrong, Manzi wrong - and ready to ignore, minimize, or mischaracterize anything that might cause someone else to doubt that conclusion. And that exemplifies what we have been calling "epistemic closure."
@ narciso:
If anyone makes a comment that you find offensive or otherwise "bad for the blog," you're welcome to contact me directly or to say as much. A ca. 500-word comment devoted entirely to attacking another commenter here - rather than a public personality - is rather unprecedented.
I'm not sure if you read the sentences that I deleted. Can we at least agree that vulgar sexual insults should simply be unacceptable?
The role of personal invective in closing down discussion may be on-topic after all.
I just read your long attack on strangelet, Joe. I've faulted her for poor manners and questioned her ideas, but that crude bit at the end was offensive, and I've exercised my prerogative/accepted my responsibility to delete it.
Since you mainly stick to substantive - if largely off-topic - discussion, since you seem to have put some work into the comment, and since, as noted, strangelet is often quite antagonistic, I'm reluctant to delete the entire comment merely out of my own discomfort with it and the example it sets. I'd still like to request that all participants refrain from making personal attacks on anyone who comments here, "asked for" or not.
@ Joe NS:
I'm familiar with your positions, Joe. You know much more about physics than I do. However, I don't really consider you an authority on GW and related fields, and there wouldn't be much point in your trying to persuade me of your position, since, upon my next intellectual encounter with someone whose credentials I consider at least as good as yours, I would be compelled, if I'm simply going by authority, to adopt that person's opinon, until the next encounter, and so on. One other alternative - the one that human nature often leads us to adopt - is to believe the authority whose conclusions best fit our prejudices. Another alternative is to concentrate on the authority whose conclusions most discomfort us, in the interest of testing ourselves against the challenge to our pre-conceived notions.
As Manzi points out in one of his posts, we do have processes set up for approximating the best authoritative opinion on scientific questions of political relevance. If there is something wrong with that process, then that might be one place where the energy of a scientifically unqualified observer might best be applied, and where scientists and non-scientists can meet on equal terms.
After Seven wrote:
Could be. Could be wishful thinking. Might take more like a major astronomical collision rather than a mere tectonic shift to change those numbers radically.
You 100% sure that the authors at those fine web sites (well the 2 out of 3 I'm familiar with and have in the past discussed or linked) are political conservatives at all, much less American political conservatives? Could be some are. If they are - and to be clear I see no reason why they couldn't be conservative - they represent one sophisticated wing of the movement. I support their work. I suspect Manzi does as well. I also know of at least one important and influential non-denialist scientist who features McIntyre's work prominently in the sections of his book that deal with GW (Richard Muller, see above). I'm all in favor of good scientific work, or good work checking up on scientists.
As for Dr Curry, her statement at your link begins with the following sentence: "First, I’m not sure why we are talking about 'sides' (that tribalism thing); we should be talking about science and how to improve the integrity of science."
And yet somehow you turn that around into a support for one "side" over the other.
Where did Manzi or I describe "the right" as "closed-minded"?
One form of closed-mindedness - or ideological defensiveness - is to turn specific criticisms into generalizations on no apparent basis. It suggests a kind of paranoia. It's also typical of the Levin counter-attack on Manzi, incidentally, in which he continually associates Manzi with the worst of the warmists, and argues as though anyone who isn't a radical denialist is a sellout and accomplice of the etc. etc. etc.
Manzi (CATO Institute, NRO contributor) and I both are "of the right," so it would make no sense for us, and others who think like either or both of us, to attribute monolothic ideological discipline to "the right." It would be equally absurd to make the left into such a monolith - though I see the practice constantly, and see it in your comment as well.
Jim Manzi criticized Mark Levin and described how a certain approach to a certain topic in his view exemplified a kind of "epistemic closure." That's it. He thinks it's bad. So do I. I pointed out that, in addition, the e.c. attack seemed to strike a nerve, and that, rightly or wrongly, scientists and intellectuals seem generally to feel more comfortable on the left - by large margins. That may change by itself - or the process may be worth helping along as much as we can.
I don't really see what the point of the whole GW skeptic section is in relation to this particular discussion, though it's a useful set of reference points. Some on the right, perhaps including Manzi, might associate themselves with that kind of skepticism. Others are less skeptical - they might be closer to the view of a scientist like Richard Muller, whose views on GW I attempted to summarize in a comment above. Others go much further, however - and even seem to feel the need to denounce or ridicule those who dare to suggest that there may some serious issues worth looking at in relation to GW/greenhouse effect/CO2, even if the warmist program and the manner in which it was developed are deeply flawed.
Where did Manzi say that? Again, see above.
I'd prefer not to generalize about Rush, Hannity, et al, and am myself from time to time one of "the guys at HotAir," though if you mean Ed and AP, I don't see them as the "same" as Levin, or the same as Drudge.
I also wonder if it's accurate to describe Manzi as the "idealist" in this discussion. Perhaps in some regards - if it's "idealism" to hold out any hope for our political system, if it's "idealism" to believe in the existence of relatively uncorrupted scientists worth listening to. If that's idealism, then it seems odd to me to use it as a pejorative - connoting a woeful lack of realism - as you seem to, when you yourself take conspicuous pride in the example of scientists who you believe have come over to your "side." Otherwise, if you don't hold out any hope for the political system - then go find a bomb vest.
I didn't spend much time in the top post discussing either Manzi or Levin's posts in detail, so I'll say here, because it seems relevant, that I think what spoke to me most directly about Manzi's was his description of examining the work of a popularizer/polemicist like Levin writing about something that he, Manzi, had studied, and having the experience, I paraphrase, of thinking "if this guy can be so bad on this subject, how can I trust him on any subject?" I've had that same experience many times with other figures - Glenn Beck comes to mind, Jonah Goldberg unfortunately, though less often - and I imagine that part, not all, of the explanation for those Pew and Murray numbers might be versions of that same experience multiplied many times over, over and over again, helped along by the kind of blanket assault on the integrity and interests of scientists and intellectuals that one encounters constantly in the trenches on the right.
Speaking in favor of reaching out to scientists and intellectuals and persuadable centrists and leftists, of trying to understand them and their motivations and how they see themselves, of constructing a program that makes sense to more of them, etc., is treated as some kind of foul betrayal by some on the right - amidst statements of proud ignorance and anger at anyone willing to point out that the anti-consensus consensus is as false as the consensus ever was. Just check out the thread at HotAir under my post - or virtually any thread under one of my posts at HotAir lately - or the discussion under the Karl post on this subject. It's bad enough wherever it's encountered, and if unopposed, it tends to take over whatever forum it appears in - and it makes the right look bad, harms the conservative project politically, and makes it more difficult for conservatives to develop better ideas and more effective arguments.
It doesn't matter whether the left is worse or not - no one is in a position to make an objective determination anyway, but what if you could? It still doesn't help conservatives, to be ideologically and emotionally closed-minded, however many or few the description applies to.
@ After Seven:
Thanks for your substantial and thoughtful reply, and sorry it was caught in the pending queue for a couple of hours. I've got to run, be back later - Gaia willing.
strangelet wrote:
My base? I don't pretend to represent anyone but whichever clique of neural subsystems happen to have won control of my verbal apparatus.
And I apologize for dropping the genocide/eugenics bomblet on you, but I was trying to make a point. As for Palin, for whomever the references were intended, you inserted them here. As I think I made clear way up above somewhere, I do think her and her following can be quite relevant to this discussion, but probably to no good purpose at daggers drawn.
strangelet wrote:
ensoulment of diploid oocytes
Since you cop to eugenicism, I'll focus on your skeptical use of the above phrase, which implies a negation of the "right to life" of human beings extended to conception. The moral position that you deny, or refuse to respect (violently I anticipate), is extended by those who hold this moral position to encompass all human beings, at all stages of development, with the understanding that putting oneself in the position to deny the the humanity (here equated with the possession of a soul) of one category of human being makes it possible to deny by parallel logic the humanity of other categories of human being.
We don't need to divert into some interminable discussion of right-to-choose/right-to-life - though it happens to be on this subject that I best recall Unger's presentation of apparently irreconcilable worldviews, mentioned above. My point was that when you attach a baggage train of issues to an already adequately controversial subject, you needlessly impair further dialogue, seeming to confirm the suspicions of those whom you are presumably trying to reach that it's all a scam, a bait and switch, and that compromise on this issue will send them, per your fiendish designs, pell-mell down the slippery slope to Brave New World, at best.
Not sure why this isn't obvious to you. Same-same on bringing la Palin into this confrontationally - another invitation to go round and round on familiar ground with no known or yet-demonstrated exit.
Barbara wrote:
To the extent that your description is accurate, then the critique should be framed as pro-science and pro-scientific process, and the situation you describe would have to be understood as an elemental threat to science and to scientists. As I suggested somewhere above, an appeal to the self-interest of scientists eventually coincides with an appeal to their ethics - since the Chicken Little/Cried Wolf feedback on events like Climategate can eventually imperil the scientific project. Even if bad luck led to the apparent validation of Chicken Little-ism, that would be even worse for scientists, since it would reinforce the position of a non-skeptical, anti-scientific, politicized/bureaucratized elite against the ethical and practical interests of true scientists, while also making them even more vulnerable to some future catastrophic event.
The GW argumentation advanced by alarmists can be applied to the scientific project itself: If there is an ecological crisis, it equally or perhaps to a greater extent may infect the scientific project, as any understanding of ecology should lead one to expect from the outset. The alarmists have been, in short, pursuing a non-ecological response to a putatively ecological problem. Luckily for conservatives, it doesn't appear necessary to explain this abstract concept to the general public - though the g.p. may have intuited it anyway - because the contradiction appears materially in the disconnect between threats-described and measures-proposed (Kyoto etc.), and responsibility-demanded and responsibility-shown (Climategate).
Additionally - skepticism of scientists and of the scientific process is integral to scientists and the scientific process - which is why there's nothing inherently unscientific about conservatism, and why science and intellectual labor generally, properly understood, are or ought to be at least as conservative as they are liberal, and also why, up until recently from the historical point of view, the conservative bias of science and scholarship tended to be much more prominent in any characterization of the relevant establishments and institutions.
@ strangelet:
Hi, strange. It's nice to have something to agree about for once.
I thought it was the Pew Poll you were endlessly citing, not the Murray graph, but either way I noted your comment at the American Scene post and would endorse it if only you could manage to avoid your needlessly abrasive language and eugenicist/genocidalist baggage. Conservatives attempting to force GW-denialism or any other form of anti-science populism on a public that prefers, or should prefer, an attitude of impartial objectivity and "openness" are seeking to cross a bridge too far. Whatever-you-are's who want to force spiritual/moral denialism are attempting the same crossing from the other side.
@ adam:
I feel that that's a one-sided, one might say classically one-sided, view of the situation. The Left has its claims against the Right, too, and the claim and counter-claim will go on forever along the Unger-Simmel model: We seek to discover the points of fruitful connection or contiguity between apparently irreconcilable viewpoints, but if we fail to reach and generalize them intellectually, the world will still resolve them materially. It's the role of the political system to manage the material or objective reconciliation of contradictions with the least possible violence - and least practicable impairment of future reconciliation.
My assumption isn't that the immoralities balance out fairly, only that life goes on, or at least has gone on so far. The American system, as in my view the authentically conservative position on the American system, doesn't assume perfect solutions - to the contrary, it makes them virtually impossible and seems to be based on the assumption of their impossibility and of the undesirability of any other assumption.
@ narciso:
Well, then, the next time I head out to shoot brutals, I'll know not to wait for you. Harumph.
@ narciso:
More to the point, I liked ZARDOZ. Still do.
What's not to like?
narciso wrote:
Where do you get the idea that "global cooling" was leftwing?
@ Joe NS:
No - a democratic political system can't be about deciding whether GW is real or not. Only nature can do that. If the GW-ists persuade enough people to feel strongly enough that it's worth the time, energy, resources, inconveniences, moral compromises, etc., then all that time, energy, etc. will be forthcoming, whether or not it was all based on a fiction. If a durable majority of our fellow citizens decide that believing in that fiction gives meaning to their lives, the rest of us will sooner or later be forced to stand back as they kneel down, whether we like it or not.
Preventing this from happening will certainly include arguments on the science, but the political equation is something different. When a large segment of the citizenry and our major international allies feel urgency about an issue, then our political life is being held hostage to a hearing of their complaints, concerns, and recommendations that is generally accepted as fair. Conservatives continue to win on this issue precisely because the warmists are so far from providing a practical means of achieving their end that doesn't also kill the hostage.
@ adam:
I think the place that we have to resist commenters is when they say that the discussion has moved on and it's time to say one last thing! These are Zombie Contentions, man - they never die.
As for conclusions already inscribed in arguments, I think you could go down the list of issues and formulate typical left or right positions in such a way that the outcome was pre-determined by respective modes of discussion. That was part of Unger's point, as we were discussing some weeks ago. It begins to look impossible to resolve an issue like abortion, for instance, because the world view of the person arguing it from the pro-choice side is already at odds with the world view of the pro-lifer.
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.
In a cosmopolitan setting such conflicts and compromises multiply astronomically, as Georg Simmel pointed out. It's hard to be a saint in the city.
Note: Thanks to everyone - everyone - for their input. I enjoyed the discussion and it also helped me recognize some things that I could and should discard in the post, which has now been cut down by around a third. If I keep on hacking at it, I might end up discarding the whole thing - but then we'd lose the thread...
adam wrote:
Agreed - which I believe qualifies as a corollary to Manzi's proposed grand strategy. In other works he's also factored in geo-engineering proposals. I think the work that got the most attention, however, was where he calculated the on-the-charts worst case scenario of total cost of GW, and showed that it would have a much smaller impact on world GDP than the main CO2-mitigation schemes. As for the off-the-charts super-alarmist scenarios, he has shown how they have to be addressed. Speculative geo-engineering proposals play a role here, too. If I were Joe Scientist, I could get totally on board. Someone somewhere needs to calculate, with total cynicism, assuming a direct correlation between socio-economic rewards and scientific "results," but with attention to Chicken Little feedback effects (e.g., Climategate), a "sustainable" path for scientific economic development - i.e., how under a conservative grand strategy all those greedy wards of the superstate will, over the middle and long term, do better than if they cause a tragedy of the scientific commons overfeeding at the AGW trough.
narciso wrote:
I'm sorry, but that's flat wrong or at least greatly exaggerated and unnecessarily defeatist. I've just finished reading PHYSICS FOR FUTURE PRESIDENTS,
awarded the (oh no!) Pulitzer Prize,written by a tenured professor at Berkeley (OMG!), and it addresses several of the topics you raise from a conservative-congenial perspective. The book was published in 2008, paperback last year. On GW, the author is quietly devastating on Gore, predicts something like Climategate biting the alarmists (though I don't recall him using the term) in the ass, produces ample stats and charts demonstrating the ridiculousness of Kyoto-like pseudo-solutions. There is nothing about this book - or its respected, popular, peer-reviewing, public-serving, eminent professor-author - to be afraid of unless you're such a committed denialist that you refuse even to consider the opinion of someone willing to present the GW case dispassionately, although he seems to think that ocean acidification may turn out to be a much bigger problem than GW. He therefore favors some kind of carbon credit scheme to encourage India and China to convert to carbon sequestration as soon as practicable.He's far from an alarmist, however, and, as I said, far from un-critical of the GW movement. I would be, overall, quite comfortable if I learned that a conservative administration pursuing a Manzi-like "grand strategy" appointed him as a top science adviser.
adam wrote:
That's the point, Adam. In pursuing a "my hysteria is more hysterical than your hysteria" + "science bad" approach to AGW or any other issue, conservatives are contributing to all of those problems, when a scientifically open, unafraid, inquiry-encouraging approach with a focus on rational risk assessment/management (something Manzi is quite good on, incidentally) offers an excellent position, arguably the commanding policy heights, for conservatives to seek to occupy.
@ narciso:
Who's "they" in your comment? Many science- and intellect-positives are quite open to the arguments you allude to. To me, your comment suggests the common rhetorical practice of imagining a monolith on the other side, then demanding one on your own to oppose it, the main effect of which is to drive the opposition together and scare off those in the middle, in a political self-fulfilling prophecy spiral.
@ Joe NS:
Post amended to address your misreading.
@ Joe NS:
Manzi is not making a scientific argument or pretending to, Joe. He is making an argument about Levin's approach to the topic.
Barbara wrote:
I have to disagree with you there: Levin's chapter wasn't up to much of any standard, and Manzi's standard isn't one of scientific purity: It's one of treating oneself, the opponent, and observers with intellectual respect, in the interest of getting at a better approximation of the truth. The great polemicists - Burke, Lincoln in his political speeches and debates - are able to lay claim to understanding their opponents arguments as well, or better, than their opponents do. They can take the opponent and the audience through them logically to their own polemical purposes. In some cases, the method requires the polemicist to make a better case for the opponent than the opponent is able to make.
Put differently, at the current relative low point politically for GW-ists, the coalition of Denialists + Unsure Realists + Believing Realists is bigger than the coalition of Alarmists. By insisting on a Denialist line, the right risks building an opposing majority made up of the other 3 groups. If you watched the British debate the other day, btw, you can see that whatever the state of things here, the "GW consensus" seems alive and well among our allies. An unusually hot year or two, a bad hurricane or flood, and the momentum may shift right back. If the public grows convinced, rightly or wrongly, today or ten years from today, that the GW-ists were right, then say hello to all sorts of things you think you've beaten.
@ 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.
@ Ken:
Well, though I don't much care for Brooks and Frum, I think I can get my mind around where they are and why. Since, as noted elsewhere, it's National Poetry Month - here's Robert Burns:
Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel’s as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.
http://www.bartleby.com/100/315.19.html
You mention your own squelched discomfort with a statement to the effect that the Constitution is based on the Bible, and I like very much your interpretation of what you believe the Founders meant by "God-given." You're probably aware, however, that there's a significant and vocal current of very public conservative comrades who are rather militant, at least verbally, about putting the Big Guy up front first and foremost, among other things because they expect to earn the appreciation of religious people who are happy to see God spoken of, and approvingly, in public. Thus, you rarely hear a mention of "natural rights" from them without an underlining gesture "from God." Belief in God (expressed as such) nearly equals belief in America or authentic constitutional Americanism in this discourse.
I've always thought that a key to Huckabee's persistent appeal was in the same phenomenon, and likewise Palin's and Bush 43's: Their other stands or acts are almost secondary compared to their willingness and ability to "testify" - an act of no little value in independent protestant/evangelical traditions (part of the very meaning of "evangelism"). Conversely, no matter how intimately Romney embraced the social conservative agenda, and no matter how consistently McCain voted a social conservative line, their inability or reluctance to evangelize made them suspect. Beck is able to circumvent Romney's problem because he's not running for anything and isn't subjected to scrutiny in the same way: In my own limited sampling of religious Beck fans, few have any idea at all that he was raised a Mormon (I have no idea whether he's observant).
But to bring us back to scientists, intellectuals, and Robert Burns, when they hear the testimony, many hear - or believe they have reason to hear - a threat or at best a lost cause. This doesn't need to be the case at all, and it's a shame that Pope Benedict's rather brilliant defense of reason in a religious context hasn't obtained wider circulation. But overcoming the prejudice from this stratum, which our occasional visitor strangelet is always happy to put forward in the most abrasive manner possible, may require some effort.
@ Ken:
I believe that the Pew Poll - you can check the link - is focused on what you might consider "real" scientists. The softies who fall under the general category of intellectual elite may not be as credible on science-related issues, obviously, but over time they may be even more influential on opinion formation, on setting the bounds of allowable discourse, even on what people mean when they report that they're "conservative." I just don't think it serves conservatives well to be complacent, or constantly to be complaining that life's just not fair.