Haidt et. al. are confident they can win the debate if they are allowed to debate. For the heterodox anthropologist or sociologist the game is already over: their discipline has already been conquered. For the economist, the threat is too remote to take seriously. Behavioral science exists in that rare in-between: methodologically, it has the tools to fight back against the excesses of the activist. Socially, it provides a compelling reason for its practitioners to use them.
Pointer from Tyler CowenAlex Tabarrok. The entire post is interesting, and it is worth contemplating why the blogger chooses to remain anonymous.
I am pessimistic about academia. Go through the following exercise:
1. When I ask you to name a prominent individual under the age of 45 who speaks up for reason against dogma, who comes to mind?
2. Does the person you just named have an academic job?
It looks to me as though when Haidt and Pinker leave the scene, no one will replace them. And I think that the threat in economics is not all that remote. I am on record as predicting that in twenty years economics will look like sociology.
It looks to me as though when Haidt and Pinker leave the scene, no one will replace them. And I think that the threat in economics is not all that remote. I am on record as predicting that in twenty years economics will look like sociology.
In terms of debates, I took economics in the Bush Sr. administration and Japanese economy that was completely on top of the world at the time has broken every Keynesian (and anti-Keynesian) Macroeconomic theory taught. Societies move and new dogma is needed but I still find basic Macroeconomics a good starting point to think about the world. But things change over time.
I am dubious of this as both society and dogma change over time and there will be new debates and issues for society. In terms of minorities, just think what was dogma and accepted when you born that academia arguing that African-American were inherently inferior was completely accepted in the 1950s. Who in 1961 would have believed the future President of the United States was born of mixed background? And young people have different sense of history and reality:
1) To my teenage kids, having an African-American President was completely normal thing. That changes all perceptions in the future.
2) What I find most fascinating in the modern US is the latest drug epidemic is hitting white populations the hardest and I have not quite understood why that is. How did this happen and nobody has quite answered it for me. And this epidemic is much bigger in death toll than past drug epidemics (probably because crime rates are contained.)
In terms of point 2, I really like to the Left & Right sociology on that one as I think both would really miss the target.
And in terms of perceptions, my teenage kids can’t believe that California was Reagan Country when I was growing up. I showed them the wicki pages of the elections and played Reagan speeches from the era.
And they literally can’t believe Reagan was ranting about the Wall and dirty Immigrants.
The blogger is not anonymous nor trying to be. He is the very talented Tanner Greer and has written several articles for Foreign Policy and the Weekly Standard.
The reason most younger people can’t openly and publicly speak up for reason against dogma is that they lack a position of security and stability from which to do so, e.g., tenure or independent wealth, especially the kind that frees up the time for high level commentary. Most of the people who can and are doing so were able to secure such security prior to the screws being tightened and the selective filters being narrowed to ensure that no one who gets through if they’re even suspected of heterodoxy or cimethink on the important points, or of any tendencies which could create liability or PR trouble. That’s a recipe for progressive echo chambers.
The overall impact is what I call “Discourse in the Shadow of the Guillotine.” False consensus becomes real consensus over time when objections are muted by intimidation.
I think the cause is the opposite, tenure doesn’t free people up to speak ‘truth’ as people don’t know truth. What it does is insulate people from the truth, where they can be wrong with few or no repercussions, and since there are far more ways to be wrong than to be right you end up with clusters of wrong people who won’t ever convert.
Too much monoculture for that to be true. A “stationary reactionary” is someone – perhaps even once a ‘liberal’ – who never changed beliefs or opinions or standards of epistemic rigor, but who then watched the Overton Window shift and shift in until they got pressed against the right side of the frame, next on the “revolution eating its own” menu, wondering, “Wait, what the hell happened?” as in Reagan’s line, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the party left me.”
The IDW crowd and fellow travelers strike me as mostly being these types of folks, but without having reflected more deeply on the more fundamental problem and social-psychological phenomena at work.
1. There are plenty of forces pushing towards mono-culture, you get rewarded for publishing and being reviewed by those with tenure. You get positions by getting those with tenure to appoint you, you get invitations to speak from other professors.
2. I seriously doubt it is actually a mono-culture, it is far more likely that a very vocal minority are driving the changes and few are resisting rather than everyone having the same beliefs. If you listen to Peterson he frequently says that ~ 20% of professors in these fields are Marxists, which leaves 80% not. That 80% is left, but not uniformly so. Most of them are busy doing what Peterson was doing 3 years ago, enjoying writing, lecturing and spending time in their chosen profession. Many of them will have tenure and will be using that to have a comfortable life, not to pursue some deeper meaning of truth.
The big question is whether there is any use for certain types of research being discussed here that could be anything other than harmful. The argument presented seems to be that knowledge is never bad and we should be able to understand the data and separate that from the resulting policy implications.
But there are no possible good policy implications, and there are a number of very harmful implications.
What sorts of dangerous research are you talking about? Would, for example, the heritability of IQ as it pertains to racial differences in IQ?
What do see as the harmful policy implications?
Please be careful with language here. I didn’t use the term “dangerous research”.
I asked if there is any “use” for certain types of research being discussed here that could be anything other than harmful. No one has given a productive example where such research could be useful.
“Would, for example, the heritability of IQ as it pertains to racial differences in IQ?”
IQ is an assessment of human intelligence that is measured at the individual level. America is committed to the idea that all discrimination should be applied at the individual level. We don’t really have a problem to solve here. If you want to know someone’s IQ so you can make some form of assessment, just apply the damn test to that person.
Really, any heritability, or other forms of association with other human traits is of dubious value when IQ can be assessed directly.
The basic value is “don’t use prediction tools when you can just as easily measure”.
As for the harm part, hopefully I don’t need to explain tendencies towards racism and the harm that can cause. Again, if you can come up with a use for knowing the distribution of IQ outcomes by race, I’m all ears. But it clearly is something that would encourage race based discrimination.
The Bell Curve is full of policy recommendations based on an understanding of IQ. Even if we exclude the chapter on race, which seems to be included merely as a way of saying “blacks don’t disprove IQ” (alternatively you could read Coming Apart which is just The Bell Curve without that chapter).
In fact Murray’s insistence that it doesn’t imply any particular policy prescription is then contradicted by the entire rest of the book (which is full of them).
Moreover, one has to consider negative policy prescriptions (don’t do XYZ because it won’t work, and in not working it will be costly and have net negative effects). A lot of The Bell Curve is about that.
In the absence of “IQ” people need some explanation for various outcome differentials either at the individual or group level. If you don’t supply one they will assume one, and what they assume may on the whole be more destructive than the truth.
I always assumed the Race Chapter in the Bell Curve was written because it did wonders for book sales but I could be wrong. (It made a lot more famous.) I guess my problem with Coming Apart and The Bell Curve solutions are:
1) The impact of religion has been falling for several generations and I see don’t see anything concrete on reversing that. This conservative wishing. In today world outside of maybe Utah and Texas there is no immediate economic gain of going to church and being religious so it is no surprise it is diminishing.
2) I still don’t see in this competitive global economy how local communities are effective in most cases.
3) Societies have always had assortative mating although it has changed. Also I believe the increase of education assortative mating is one reason the divorce has fallen the several decades. (And isn’t Charles Murray the reality of a lot 1970s divorces in which they were educated couples coming apart?)
4) Finally it appears the developed world has settled on a weird Singapore/Sangerism Solution in which young people wait until 30ish to start families. So we are making so hard to settle and start families before thirty there is less society failure but also it leads to the decline of religion.
At the heart of libertarian (Cowen,Caplan) and neoliberalism (Yglesias) failures is they see the goodness and impact of religion but have no ideas to increase its impact.
Again, if you can come up with a use for knowing the distribution of IQ outcomes by race, I’m all ears.
Well, let’s take a weird hypothetical. Assume that public policy pushes people to get lots and lots of schooling. Counselors tell young people to get as much schooling as they can. Schools are subsidized directly and indirectly (Pell Grants, student loans). The legal system is pretty much fine with employers who say, “degree required” and all sorts of grown-ups tell young people, “you can’t get a good job if you don’t graduate.”
Now assume that one group has a significantly lower average IQ. Members of this group will have significantly lower grades, school completion, etc.–and significantly fewer opportunities. Fifty years of attempts to close “the gap” in school performance will have failed.
If you believe that there is no average IQ difference, you will continue to push “more school”–and continue to screw the members of the lower IQ group. If you believe there is a significant difference, you might want to de-emphasize school and think outside the “school is good; more school is better” box.
I have no problem with coming to a conclusion about IQ thresholds and the efficacy of a particular schooling or training regime (although that should be done with caution).
Where I part company is with the need to associate that with a “group” when we can apply conclusions at the individual level based on direct measures.
Garett Jones with “Hive Mind” was pretty close to the edge of the Overton window.
My impression is that the political culture of higher education is driven by non-teaching administrative staff as it is by teaching staff. Having put two kids through college in the last decade and knowing people who work in universities, it seems like kids get excited about feminism, socialism, and Islam during their sophomore and junior years. The professors seem able to tap into late teen rebelliousness but by senior year the kids seem to see through the cant and get bored by it. And it seems as if though quite a few of their professors went about their jobs in a workmanlike manner, sticking to the subject matter and eschewing political claptrap. I don’t have a problem with this because college is really not at all about free thought, but rather learning conformism, how to fit in, avoid attention, and tell people what they want to hear. Spouting intersectionalist drivel is undoubtedly great training for a career in sales. Both kids came out as socialists but are working in real jobs where they now see the politics as more of a burden and obstacle to their work than anything to get excited about. In time, as their social circles begin to include more and more working people, I am sure they will conform to the dominant working culture and become pragmatic ticket-splitters.
But the big attention gathering events on campus and other political horror stories about politically correct policies invariably came from administrators. US universities seem grossly overstaffed with all kinds of offices of this kind of diversity and that kind of inclusion, all of who have to outdo each other with outrageous stunts. These types have lots of politically powerful associations and guilds and for this reason I believe the US university system is incapable of reform and will endure in its wretched condition for a long time.
The silver lining is that all of the academic fields that have been or will be subjugated by leftists are for the most part about as useful as tits on a boar hog. Sociology, anthropology, pyschology….these are all useless majors, no point in worrying about them because they are irredeemable.
Reformers focus should be on the leftist influence in admissions policy generally and particularly in the occupational majors. Medicine, law, education, and social work in particular have adopted admissions and graduation policies that exclude heterodox thinkers. If you want to prioritize efforts on reform, these are the fields that really matter.
Minor note – the pointer was by Alex Tabbarok, not Tyler Cowen.
It already is. Paul Krugman is a left-wing ideologue who occasionally does some economics.
It looks to me as though when Haidt and Pinker leave the scene, no one will replace them.
Yep, that’s my feeling, too. People who share their opinions/values will still be there, but they’ll be too cowed to say so.
Haidt is 55 and Pinker is 64. They will likely be around for a very long time.
I am on the record as saying macroeconomics is politics in drag.
Haidt & Pinker “were able to secure such security prior to the screws being tightened and the selective filters being narrowed to ensure that no one who gets through if they’re even suspected of heterodoxy or cimethink on the important points” (@Handle)
We need to honestly state that there is secret discrimination against hiring Republicans in the vast majority of Universities — which all receive large sums of gov’t tax money / tax breaks. (Harvard is a low-tax hedge fund with a University for tax breaks and loans.)
We should be talking about this more, and suggesting ideas to reform it.
“Affirmative Action” for pro-life Christians?
Ending gov’t support for those Universities which are the worst? (30 to 1 Dem to Rep registration?)
How to track and measure colleges, and professors, and administrators?
Skip current universities and go straight towards “competency” tests in various subjects, with certified certificates? And possibly a digitally saved portfolio of individual work?
There’s talk about an Internet of Things — what about a Federal Register of saved Student Work, copied from whatever is saved by the college?
The secret discrimination against Reps is not going to be solved by itself, and will get worse before it gets better.
Contrary to @Edgar, the college indoctrination of most young people into “conforming socialists” seems likely to be a huge problem. Once young folks decide, for themselves, how they believe, it is very difficult to get them to change their minds. See NeoNeocon on this (and many other excellent posts). On any given issue which they have deep knowledge, they’ll see how the shallow neo-socialist news is wrong; but on the many issues they don’t study, those same Dem media folk will be believed when their wrong news conforms to the wrong bias they’ve been indoctrinated with.
And I don’t see big cities full of richer-than-rural whites changing from big-gov’t Dems to Reps. I see the reverse in the suburbs changing from hetero including Reps towards pure Dem excluding Reps.
There is a “Good and Evil” space in people’s hearts. If it’s not filled with God, it will be filled with something else. Far too many are filling that space with a “Trump is Evil; Reps are Evil”. This is terrible.
http://www.thenewneo.com/ << link to Neo. Put into another post.
Thank you for the kind words about my post.
To answer your question: There is Jason Manning: https://soca.wvu.edu/faculty-and-staff/faculty-directory/jason-manning