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Is A Rational Nation Ruled By Science A Terrible Idea? (newscientist.com)
Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an article from Jeffrey Guhin, an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA:
Imagine a future society in which everything is perfectly logical. What could go wrong...? Last week, US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson offered up the perfect example of scientism when he proposed the country of Rationalia, in which "all policy shall be based on the weight of evidence". Tyson is a very smart man, but this is not a smart idea. It is even, we might say, unreasonable and without sufficient evidence... employing logic to consider the concept reveals that there could be no such thing...
First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, science has no business telling people how to live. It's striking how easily we forget the evil that following "science" can do. So many times throughout history, humans have thought they were behaving in logical and rational ways, only to realize that such acts have yielded morally heinous policies that were only enacted because reasonable people were swayed by "evidence".
First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, science has no business telling people how to live. It's striking how easily we forget the evil that following "science" can do. So many times throughout history, humans have thought they were behaving in logical and rational ways, only to realize that such acts have yielded morally heinous policies that were only enacted because reasonable people were swayed by "evidence".
Running things by believing whatever your friends on the internet says isn't really working out, so let's try it! If it doens't work, at least it'll be able to say that...
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
For the children, of course.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Reasonable people can be swayed by both evidence and non-evidence. Evidence can be independently confirmed and backed by facts. The scientific method does not allow for intentional deception when practiced correctly because deception demonstrates facts to the contrary. It does allow for mistakes- but mistakes are possible otherwise.
So yes, running a nation based on science makes perfect sense because it applies all the principles that give us the best outcomes- our PCs, our electric cars, out trips to the moon, our modern medicines, atronomy. Those outcomes aren't possible via intuition. Science solved big problems and can effective measure the needs of the many against the needs of the few- something we have trouble with.
Maybe, but it would still be better than allowing religion or money telling people how to live.
... which is essentially a corrupt theocracy. I'd gladly live in a society run by rational ideas over what we have now.
I don't respond to AC's.
Let's compare Science against the philosophies that current rule our societies.
Nationalism? Capitalism? Fear? RELIGION??!
I'll take science....
Being misled while attempting to base your laws off of actual physical evidence isn't is bad as us currently making up our laws based off the fucking BIBLE.
Any optimization approach/algorithm is set up to maximize the value of its utility function. Consider two utility functions for getting from "A" to "B", 'fewest miles' or 'fastest'. A direct route that takes you down 10 miles of roads at a speed limit of 30 MPH, compared to 20 miles on an interstate at 65 MPH, will win under the first utility but not under the second.
The same thing holds true for public policy. Do you want "most lives saved?" Do you want "greatest economic output?" Do you want "Least tax burden?"
So independent of any other consideration, there is huge judgement and therefore huge variation when trying to conduct 'rational policy' by what you choose as your utility function.
There's one huge reason why ruling your society based on "science" is a bad idea: What you will generally find is that, whatever method you use to govern, it will eventually fall under the sway and corruption of the rich and powerful. Attempting to merge science and politics won't result in politics being ruled by scientists, but in science being run by politicians.
Of course, there are other more specific problems, one being that "scientists" are often not as detached and rational as they believe themselves to be. What constitutes sufficient evidence is itself under constant debate. There are difficulties with the question of whether science can determine morality... And more. Every vague or uncertain point and every place where there's wiggle-room will become a tool of people seeking political power.
And why do you think "creationism" is a thing, after all? You try to marry science and politics, and politicians will exploit ignorance and uncertainty to make their positions sound "scientific" to those who don't know better. Neil deGrasse Tyson wants more of that? He should stick to physics, and stay out of fields he doesn't understand.
Tyson is nonsensical.
Science is a tool and a methodology for acquisition and extrapolation of quantitative states.
Presuming to base a society solely on quantitative basis, and imagining that qualitative determinations will be irrelevant in the face of self-evident data analysis is fundamentally flawed. By negating the existence of assumptions and bias - and the very real experience of people individually and collectively beyond their units of measure, Tyson proposes a world more deeply subject to unconsious forces - grown more powerful, because they are assumed not to exist!
He should call such a society "Bias-o-topia" NOT "Rationalia".
In the end, his proposal amounts to little more than an elaboration on the fantastic notion that the world should be ruled by measuring tapes and telescopes - perhaps by means of a gearbox.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I think the OP is falling into an anti-science fear-mongering state of mind that misrepresents the core idea of evidence-based policy making. The best thing about science is that it is constantly improvingâ"getting closer to what we might call (with some inherent romanticism) the truth. The anti-science knee-jerk reaction to this is that, because scienceâ"at some given point in its progressionâ"has not yet reached "the truth" then it is wrong and therefore worthless. I argue that there is no better way to move consistently in the direction of truth than the rigorous application of evidence and careful testing that is true science. When it comes to the application of what is learned through the scientific methodâ"a moving target that is constantly improvingâ"to public and governmental policies and laws, there is more than one way to use it, depending on the nature of the government installed. A totalitarian society might tend towards additive applicationâ"creating new laws and rules for society to limit its bounds. A case of "science says this change is optimal so this change will now happen," for example. This is not a methodology that most of us would find comfortable. But in a representative society that values fairness and freedom, such as what we aspire to here in the United States, the application should be of a subtractive nature. Science should be a filter to prevent patently wrong and harmful laws for being enacted and a measuring stick to judge the validity of laws created in more ignorant times. With science-based knowledge continuously improving, something no other form of knowledge acquisition can claim, applying that knowledge to prevent oppressive or dangerous laws is an obvious choiceâ"far better than letting the laws bend to the wills of lobbyists and political powerhouses which have no secure claim to truth or accuracy and, in fact, are often dead-set against them. There is no inherent imperative that science should or would be used to inflict legal restrictions upon American citizensâ"that form of application requires a more totalitarian government. (A form of government that a scientific analysis might steer a society away from.) We should embrace the benefit of scienceâ"more accurate knowledgeâ"and not ignore what we've learned by sticking our heads in the sand and claiming tradition, expediency, selfishness, and ignorance trump truth.
Way too many words have been said while beating around this simple bush:
Any conclusion about how something "should" be is a combination of two elements:
1) how things already are
2) our preferences
Science gives us #1. Our values give us #2. Eliminate either from the equation, and you have all kinds of stupidity and suffering.
That is really all there is to it.
First stop politicizing science, then give me a call.
Using scientific reasoning to rationally choose between potential decisions is a great idea, but it doesn't solve the problem of deciding the basis of the questions. Logic can really only solve for one variable at a time. People will still have to decide which societal variables to solve and how to balance the weight of multiple variables. Fair is never fair to everybody. You are always having to make trade-offs between forms of fairness: equity, equality and welfare.
-rd
First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, science has no business telling people how to live.
What is it with this recent trend of anti-expertism? This arguement was used in the Brexit as well as several political campaigns of recent times. People confronted with evidence that something isn't working rather than address the evidence move straight into either:
a) attacking something about a study that has nothing to do with the evidence e.g. who commissioned it or the fact that it disagrees with an own internally biased study (see Australian election where the Coalition attacked Labor's economic credentials as non existent despite their treasurer winning awards for his policy and the direct impact of his policy keeping a country out of a recession.
b) attacking people who believe in studys saying things like "The public is sick of experts". Interesting this is a statement often made by a career politician rather than their far more educated advisers. Damn those smart people with their fancy degrees, what would they know.
This is the rise of President Camacho
science has no business telling people how to live.
Is the author seriously suggesting science shouldn't tell people that smoking is dangerous to their health and the health of those around them? That for their own well being they shouldn't smoke? What about pregnant mothers who do drugs? Does the author truly believe that women shouldn't be told how they're poisoning their unborn child through drugs?*
If the author is a scientist (I didn't check), they should have their credentials revoked. It is well within the realm of science to tell people how to live their lives BUT not force them to. People should be free to determine their own course of action based on the scientific evidence and in so doing, can not later complain no one told them something was bad for them (see cigarette lawsuits for a perfect example of such a situation).
* I only bring this up because of the whiners who talk about abortion killing a person yet remain absolutely silent when pregnant women poison that same person for nine straight months. Apparently poisoning is perfectly acceptable to them so long as something comes out. After all, they're not the ones who are going to pay for the mentally/physically deformed kid.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
As vague as his statement was, there is still A LOT wrong with it. Data does not equal Truth (Capital 'T'). To govern, it is not enough to know the speed of light or understand general relativity. Science provides no special wisdom or insight into the nature of human suffering. Science is not truth. Science is an epistemological baseball bat that you whack ideas with. If they die from their injuries, then they had it coming...The ideas that survive get passed to the next scientist, and the next, all across the world. If at the end of that gauntlet, the idea is still standing, then maybe just maybe it might be true. Even then, science does nothing to help define 'truth' or 'knowledge' in any meaningful way. Questions of Axiology or Metaphysics cannot be answered or decided by evidence. Take every measurement of me that you can - any MRI, scan, test or metric and add them all together it won't answer the question 'what is the value of my life?'. No 3D scan or image of the Mona Lisa will explain why it is a masterpiece.
There are many cases where government could be improved or made more efficient by careful analysis. But many (if not most) of the larger choices that are faced by government are axiological (value based decisions) that weigh benefit vs. cost or of one group to that of another. In this case no amount of evidence will change anything. Each group will lobby in it's own best interest and there must be some method in place to come to a decision.
Government policies should be based upon ethics more than evidence. We've all seen too much fabricated 'evidence'. We've all seen too many leaders who do the CORRECT or EFFICIENT or EXPEDIENT thing. It'd be nice for once to see policy based upon the question 'What is the moral thing to do?'.
I guess I just feel like secular humanism needs more humanism in it these days...
Eugenics is NOT about measuring people's head to determine intelligence, it is about artificial selection and much needed quality control. That was just the tool used at the time, turned it is wrong, doesn't mean eugenics is wrong. For example, medicine was treating sick people by bleeding them, we know that's BS today, does that make medicine BS? Sure enough, medicine is BS today, but not because it used to treat people by bleeding them dry, but because it has turned into a very profitable business that makes money on sickness and has zero interest of preventing it, as long as there are enough healthy slaves to meet labor demand.
Eugenics is NOT scientifically invalid, the measurement of intelligence by head circumference is. A big difference, not even subtle.
Not if some religion is true.
Ok, which bit is true? How do you propose to objectively prove it? How do you tell the difference between the "false" religions and the "true" one(s)?
Rhetorical questions of course. Religion by definition cannot be objectively true because it depends of belief in something which isn't falsifiable. If it cannot in principle be measured or observed (with past, existing or future technology) then it cannot be true.
(Here we begin a predictably unresolved debate about religion, rationity, what constitutes evidence, limits of human ability to reason soundly, straw men, etc.)
You're the one that brought it up...
The problem is that science, if done well, can tell us what the observable consequences of our actions might be, but it will never tell us what outcomes we should value. For instance, do we value equality or progress? Do we value the happiness of animals as much as that of humans? Do we value freedom or security? The answers to none of these questions are self-evident (and saying that they are self-evident does not make it so).
These are all the province of moral philosophy, and that field gives no easy answers.
Dan
The
Nice tits is a desirable trait. Doesn't mean I'm practicing Eugenics when I chase the tits owner/operater.
Eugenics practiced by society isn't bad just because the traits being bred for were wrong. It was bad because it put too much power in the hands of government, which can't be trusted.
Even if their were an absolute genetic ideal, it would still be a bad idea to give government that much power. They will run with it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Oh come on. If something is seems good on paper, but turns out to be bad in reality, that means that the theory is actually pretty much shit; you just haven't thought hard enough about it.
You can't find fault in the logic underlying Marxism? How about the central assumption that cooperation will naturally overcome competitiveness? Does anything about what you've observed in human nature suggest that that's a valid assumption across the entire species (not just some exceptions)? I mean, think of the prisoners dilemma, and extend that across broader society. All it takes is one group of people understanding that collusion, at the expense of the collective, can produce an outcomes that vastly favor themselves, and you've got yourself a power/resource imbalance. See every failed communist state ever.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
Marx's diagnosis of the problem was flawless - capitalism is fundamentally exploitative. The investor class abuses the worker class.
Competitiveness is not a magic solution. When a pharmaceutical company brings a drug to market, it's patented and over time other companies can sell generic versions and conduct their own research with it and variants of it. But when a pharmaceutical company researches a drug and the drug is deemed to ineffective or unsafe to bring to market, it's buried - and there's a good chance a dozen other pharmaceutical companies will have researched and then dropped the same drug. Or look at planned obsolescence. Do cars need their styling tweaked every four years, and the cupholder layout rearranged? How about smart phones, wonderful pieces of engineering that consumers are expected to discard in two years because it's better for the vendor - not the consumer - if they do. How about foods and large food portions laden with extra salt and sugar because they sell more? And I don't begrudge Jane and John Doe their choice when they take a 5500 pound SUV to drop off their only child at elementary school, but you can't call that model an efficient use of resources. Competition is not always efficient.
I do agree that Marx's cure for capitalism is unworkable, for the reasons you describe. But I think his criticisms are rock solid.
Whatever else you may think of him... Marx was right about one thing, capitalism was and is hugely exploitative, fundamentally unjust and flies in the face of freedom. He repeatedly warned against achieving socialism through violent revolution because he correctly surmised that doing so would lead to abusive autocracies, he believe it MUST be achieved democratically if it was to have any chance at all of success.
The proof that capitalism was all the evils he called it - is that revolutions DID happen, against his advice, and despite ending up exactly as he predicted. The blame for everybody ever killed by a communist dictator belongs squarely with capitalism. If capitalism had not been so entirely evil, the revolutions would never have happened and those dictators would never have come to power. Revolutions do not come easy. People will put up with a LOT before they are willing to risk personal life and limb to change a social order they are now unlikely to live to see. Revolutions come - when the majority of people have been so thoroughly exploited that they have absolutely nothing left to lose.
If capitalism had not left the world with millions of people who had nothing left to lose - then Stalin and Pol Pot and Mao would never have been in power. Marx said the machines of capitalism are oiled by the blood of the workers and I would add -and fueled by the burning corpses of the colonized.
The end result of capitalism is severe inequality and the INEVITABLE result of severe inequality can only ever be violent revolution.
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