“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter,” said Sir Winston Churchill, and indeed there is something about the complexity of modern life that makes me yearn for government by philosopher-kings. Or, more exactly, by subject matter experts. Law enforement policy should be determined by people who understand law enforcement and its complexities. Environmental policy should be set by environmental experts. Economic policy should be set by economists. And so on.
This is not possible, because subject matters of policy overlap. Economic policies have potential environmental impacts on society; law enforcement policies have potential economic impacts on society; environmental policies have law enforcement implications. And so on. So the part of me that yearns for subject matter expertise in policy-making asks for someone who is a public policy creation expert to balance these competing interessts and that sort of person, as it turns out, is called a “politician,” a person who has subject matter expertise in the realm of politics. At its best, politics involves the balancing of other different kinds of expertise to craft ideal policies.
But there is something about politics that causes some — many — intelligent people to break down into unthinking partisans, willing to engage in all sorts of intellectually invalid antics in order to win. Tribal instinct trumps critical thinking skills. I am susceptible to confirmation bias myself, and so are you. Hopefully, we can master this and be objective about evidence even while our norms vary from one another; in practice, the tendency is for people to reject evidence and data that undermines their predetermined policy preferences and instead to seek out data which supports those preferences. Again, this is human nature, something to which we are all vulnerable to some degree.
I came across this in preparing a biography of Carl Sagan for an offline project. In an extensive rememberance of Dr. Sagan, one of his former students chronicles how Sagan’s political advocacy of nuclear disarmament and opposition to the First Gulf War dovetailed into his own planetary physics background. The result was his dire predictions of “nuclear winter” and “petrochemical winter” with which he made a very public spectacle of himself, based upon research that turns out to have been more speculative than would have or did survive peer review. Carl Sagan was vulnerable to selection bias, too, and the question of whether his political advocacy informed his scientific inquiries, or vice versa, is a chicken-and-egg sort of issue.
The real issue is that when politics and science dovetail, it forces people to admit selection bias, and politics generally wins over objectivity. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, Sagan ran up against what to him was an unthinkable proposition: people liked their nuclear weapons. Consequently, they rejected his data and his theories, which at the time were plausible enough and only took critique in the rarefied and technical world of scientific peer review. The public did not reject Sagan’s call to pacifism because they thought his science was bad. The public rejected Sagan’s call to pacifism because it rejected pacifism. Sagan was not a subject matter expert when it came to politics.
A similar dynamic is at play now, concerning the issue of global warming. The science underlying much of the speculation is subject to question and peer review and much remains unsettled. Possibly the worst thing that could have happened for the establishment of subject matter credibility on the issue of whether anthrogenic global warming occurs or not was Al Gore making a movie about it. The sorts of people who didn’t like Al Gore very much — and bear in mind that in the United States, that was about half the population — recognized policy advocacy coming from the other tribe, and rejected it and everything it was based on out of hand. Actual scientific critique of the theories in An Inconvenient Truth were and still are offered as “proof” that the science described in the movie was bad. Defenders of global warming theory, in turn, view any criticism of what they have to say as “denialism” and reject other evidence out of hand.
The truth is, the science described in the movie is actually overwhelmingly complex and it cannot be well-understood other than by technical experts. Those of us on the outside of that inner circle of knowledge can do what we reasonably can to understand what is being described, see if there is a consensus among the people who do know what they’re talking about, and try to understand what is going on as best we can. At our best, we could separate our political feelings from our grasp of scientific information. But when scientific information is very complex and political polarization is very simple, that only makes more seductive the path of information selection bias.
I fear that the debate about global warming is so political that no one can separate their politics from their understanding of the science underlying it. And the science is so pervasive theat it touches all sorts of other subject matter areas, including economics and industrial policy, transportation policy, food and nutrition issues, that even if we could set aside our politics about this issue, we would still be faced with other significant and worthy concerns against which to balance it.
This is one of the issues that would confound even philosopher kings. But we don’t have philosopher kings. We have ordinary voters and we have the politicians they actually elect. With these people, we must confront problems and make policy. And everyone, even a subject matter expert, is vulnerable to selection bias. All we can do in the face of our own shortcomings is to try to overcome them, knowing that eventually we will fail.
The problem with most arguments against AGW is that they are of the “its cold out so global warming aint right”, “al gore is fat” and “its all a giant global conspiracy to turn us into gay loving, socialist, multicultural, commies” variety. Its not that it isn’t possible to have a reasonable conversation from the side of a AGW skeptic, its just that so few AGW skeptics appear able to do so.
David Brin has a good post on what a AGW skeptic should sound like. Funny how few of the AGW-skeptics sound like ’em, even among the scientific community (well, the paid by exxon scientific community, if you believe the research.)
Likko, I trust very few “experts” to overcome their own confirmation biases. Experts are human too, sort of.
😉
Except the history of science is the history of revolutionary discoveries that everybody ends up accepting. Build enough evidence and the experts will adopt the new view.
Tough to do social science in your garage, Mr. G, or build a particle accelerator. And the game has changed about what an “expert” is. Freeman Dyson—OUT! Plato—OUT! Paul Krugman—IN! [Sort of, in between giggles.]
Don’t know what you are talking about. Plato is still studied although that would be in philosophy class. Dyson spheres are, and always will be, cool. Being a working scientist involves constantly assimilating new advances which are constantly being made and changing and adapting theories. The belief that scientists or “experts” don’t change or modify their beliefs is false. And i mean silly false.
FWIW Krugman is widely respected as an economist. I know being a liberal should automatically make that impossible, but there it is. Seems like Krugman is obviously an expert in econ, even though, and i know this is hard to believe, you don’t agree with him.
Krugman’s a man of the hour. His specialty is Japan’s Lost Decade. And, what a coincidence, we’re just coming out of one ourselves! (or heading into a Long Recession).
… the worrisome thing is that Bush picked Bernanke, whose specialty is the Great Depression.
Just in case you haven’t noticed, there are these things call ‘oil companies’, and ‘coal companies’, which have more money than God (not as much as Wall St, but definitely more than God).
They fund people quite lavishly (see the Heartland, Heritage, CATO, Manhattan, Hoover, American Enterprise, Competitive Enterprise Institutes, as well places like George Mason ‘University’). They have the money to have people like whatshisname the AG of Virginia to conduct fraudulent investigations, and have many Reps and Senators in their pockets.
Also please note that the vast majority of the data and analyses are available for auditing and critique – the only data I’ve heard of which weren’t available were in the CRU in the UK, which had bought data from the UK Met Office under restrictions about republishing. And even that would be available from the UK Met Office directly for those with (Big Carbon) funding.
So at this point it’s pretty clear that you’re a liar, so I’ll ignore any more lies you issue.
I’m pissy to
Sorry, this was addressed to TVD.
Barry, I can’t tell if you’re picking up the “politicized science” ball and running with it for humorous effect or if you’re sincerely irritated at me for some reasson. If it’s the latter, allow me to respectfully suggest that’s you’ve just proven my real point — one’s political biases color one’s perception of science. If it’s the former, please excuse me for throwing a wet blanket on your joke.
Pretty sure Burt hasn’t read the research on who funds the anti-AGW crowd. Also pretty sure that if he did read it, he would discount the source, even though said source routinely works for the Libertarian party, and the Republican party — all because he was paid by the Green Party in this particular instance.
Once again, politics is the mind-killer. The point here is not whether AGW is a reality or a plausible theory or alarmist fiction. The point is not who funds pro-AGW research or anti-AGW research. The point is that no one can so much as mention wade in to the issue without offending someone’s political sensibilities and every available source of information is subject to political attack. This makes it difficult for a person who genuinely wishes in good faith to learn more to find a source of information that can be considered trustworthy.
Burt, if you take out the paid by exxon/other gas companies folks, the scientific consensus is AGW does exist [not one dissenter. I repeat not ONE dissenter — I’ve seen more dissent about the theory of gravity, in peer reviewed journals!]
The fact that scientific consensus is under attack is a problem. Just like it is with “Intelligent Design” — did you read the Dover Decision? That Republican Judge cut ’em to SHREDS — politely, as lawyers are wont to do.
There is a right, and there is a wrong here — you do have unbiased sources of information//even if the people you trust tell you that they’re biased.
What a twisted, wicked world we weave!
Outstanding post, Burt.
What a lot of people fail to appreciate, is that even people on the “right” side of any debate are very frequently not right for the right reasons. I am pondering a post on this.
Greg mentions those who disbelieve global warming because it’s cold outside and that’s somehow proof that global warming is fake, but they follow on the heels of those who look at the weather right now and consider it proof that global warming is real. In either case, of course, weather isn’t climate, but a good portion of those arguing each position are arguing from relative ignorance. It’s a matter of who we believe. Not read from the papers of science journals, but rather what is said by the political figures that we trust or loathe for political rather than scientific reasons.
While I am agnostic on the subject of AGW, this applies just as much to subjects that I am not agnostic or ambivalent about. A lot of my fellow believers in vaccines haven’t read the medical journals. They believe it because their doctor says so or more broadly because that’s what “right-minded” people believe.
This gets us to the place where we have to sort out when it’s reasonable to put one’s faith in what an expert says, versus when it’s reasonable to be skeptical of something despite expert assurances. Vaccination is a good example of that; intuitively, it can seem improbable and even dangerous; why, then, do we believe doctors when they say it will prevent rather than cause disease?
“In either case, of course, weather isn’t climate, but a good portion of those arguing each position are arguing from relative ignorance. ”
Well, what do the people say who are *not* arguing from ignorance?
Pissy alert! The comment that a ‘a good portion of those arguing each position are arguing from relative ignorance’ is nearly always true, but it’s not an excuse to throw up one’s hands.
Pissy alert?
People who are not arguing from ignorance are frequently arguing from an agenda: ideologically, monetarily, the need for importance, or all of the above.
This isn’t an argument to disbelieve everybody, but it does add to the gray enough to allow people to be convinced that the other side is lying.
I do believe, and I think Mr. Likko necessarily disagrees, that if people rejected Sagan’s views in the 80s and early 90s, it was his pacifism they rejected and not his diagnosis of what the world would look like after a nuclear war. They opposed his means of averting such a war, or at least they valued other things so much they might be willing to risk the possibility of nuclear war. But I don’t think they would necessarily have denied the catastrophic effects.
It is possible to divorce advocacy of peace from advocacy for a scientific idea. The part of Sagan’s story that is revealing is that opposition to a political idea (pacifism) will cause one to resist a scientific proposal (global cooling).
Unfortunately, the 1991 Gulf War happened and Sagan’s ideas were put to the test. There was no perceptible impact on global temperatures when Iraq set fire to Kuwait’s oil fields. Had Sagan not politicized his scientific proposal, it would have been written off as “Well, it seemed like a reasonable guess, sorry Carl; let’s figure out why didn’t it come true,” which is how science is supposed to work. But with politics added, it became a career-derailing public humiliation.
“Unfortunately, the 1991 Gulf War happened and Sagan’s ideas were put to the test. There was no perceptible impact on global temperatures when Iraq set fire to Kuwait’s oil fields. ”
And the order of magnitude of those, compared to a nuclear war, was miniscule (Sagan was a fool to make predictions from those oil field fires).
Last I heard, ‘nuclear winter’ has been repeatedly verified in more and more accurate climate models. It’s as true as something can be without running the experiment.
Will, your comments and Burt’s seem to me to be a classical case of right-wing freudian projection [which as this point should be call ‘Rovism’] where one’s own failures and faults are cast upon opponents, even when the opponents’ levels are far smaller.
last I heard, from someone with a weather sim background, the 50’s scientists deliberately downplayed the threat of a nuclear winter. It’s far closer than we realize.
““The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter,” said Sir Winston Churchill, and indeed there is something about the complexity of modern life that makes me yearn for government by philosopher-kings. ”
Of course, the best argument *for* democracy would be a five-minute talk with dictators – or just people who’ve live under them.
no. talk to someone who lived in Argentina. Anarchy is a far better argument for democracy than Dictatorship. People survive dictatorship, by and large.
Burt Likko August 8, 2011 at 1:35 pm
“Barry, I can’t tell if you’re picking up the “politicized science” ball and running with it for humorous effect or if you’re sincerely irritated at me for some reasson. If it’s the latter, allow me to respectfully suggest that’s you’ve just proven my real point — one’s political biases color one’s perception of science. If it’s the former, please excuse me for throwing a wet blanket on your joke.”
Sorry, Burt – I’m actually pissy at Mike Farm, TVD and the other guys who might as well be bots.
The serious part of my comment is that Global Warming is a theory which had to fight uphill against the basic presumptions of climate theory, and did it the hard way – collection of data, analyses and new data which showed that it was actually happening. The data came from field after field after field of science, and as it happens more confirming data comes in from more fields of science (e.g., botany, entomology, epidemiology, zoology and agriculture – that I know of).
In many areas, we’re seeing decadal changes which had been predicted on the level of centuries or millenia; possible negative feedback loops are dropping like flies, so to speak. Read ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ for a beautiful of how the theory got established, how the evidence was collected and tested, and some neat interactions between various scientific fields.
The opponents are lavishly funded special interests, proven able to buy people in high levels of government (or in fact *be* high levels of government, such as Cheney). They get to do their own analyses and critique at will, both in the scientific community and in publicity.
At this point, they’ve been walking slowly backwards for twenty years.
In the question of for which things should the experts be trusted, and which not, global warming is a perfect example of the first category.
It’s science – rather classical, standard science, where the accumulation of evidence forces a change in standard theories of what’s going on and how the world works.
The funny (and infuriating) thing is that many of the posters and commenters here will gladly accept Chicago School economics, even as they sit in the wreckage of the neoliberal/neoclassical world.
Burt –
I want to respond in more detail later when I have time, but just in case too much time slips away…
This is my favorite thing you’ve written to date, which based on how much I like your stuff is saying something.
“I see ’em go, I see ’em come back – when they do come back. I see what it’s done to them. And for what? A purely nominal political privilege that pays not one centavo and that most of them aren’t competent to use wisely anyhow. Now if they would let medical men run things – but never mind that; you might think I was talking treason, free speech or not.”