05/13/12

“The Stone” Weighs in on Lawrence Krauss

Leave it to “The Stone,” that wonderful testament to distorting trends in philosophy through selection bias, to show us the actual lesson to take away from a controversy by botching an argument. Here’s an example of what I am talking about:

But, the philosopher says, What about the laws of physics? They are something, not nothing—and where do they come from? Well, says Krauss — trying to be patient — there’s another promising theoretical approach that plausibly posits a “multiverse”: a possibly infinite collection of self-contained, non-interacting universes, each with is own laws of nature. In fact, it might well be that the multiverse contains universes with every possible set of laws. We have the laws we do simply because of the particular universe we’re in. But, of course, the philosopher can respond that the multiverse itself is governed by higher-level laws.

It seems to me that the reason Dr. Krauss labeled philosophers as “moronic” in the first place was because he finds arguments such as these tedious, academic, and motivated by trying to prove things people want to believe in rather than thinking about the right way to think things through and coming to appreciate the results of well-defined, preciously honed methods. The argument above is absolutely the type of philosophizing that Krauss doesn’t feel the need to give the time fo day. I don’t blame him.

But here’s how Krauss got himself in the middle of a furor: he alienated one half of philosophy by calling out their tedious ways of argument and he sold out the other half of philosophers by lumping them in with the first group of philosophers not recognizing how hard some of us have to fight to deal with this stuff on a daily basis.

With his initial comments, Krauss was, to the extent he was guilty of anything, guilty of friendly fire. In dropping his verbal bomb on philosophy, he (possibly inadvertently) hit those philosophers on the barricades trying to push back against the very kind of philosophy that Krauss showed so much disdain for in the first place.

While I initially described Dr. Krauss’ article in Scientific American to be a “walking back” of his prior views, I find this previous statement of mine insufficient and unfair.  Krauss not only apologizes “to those philosophers I may have unjustly offended by seemingly blanket statements about the field” and, more importantly in my view, Krauss also says regarding philosophy of science, “I admit that this could primarily reflect of my own philosophical limitations, but I suspect this experience is more common than not among my scientific colleagues.” Here Krauss goes beyond conciliatory to optimistic. This statement — given the fact that it appears after Krauss has written about the value of philosophers like Strawson, Grayling, Singer, Dennett, and Churchland to his understandings of the meaning of a human life — indicates that Krauss is sounding a hopeful note that if we all could be made better off by talking more across disciplines, than perhaps that ought to be explored more carefully.

Ultimately, what I would like to take out of the entire exchange (to this point, and may it please be over!) is that there is a real chance that many hard scientists and many social theorists (be they philosophers or whatever) have discovered one another as colleagues working on problems whose answers may be increasingly intertwined, as opposed to topics that have a “turf” that different types of academics need fight over.  Many of us in philosophy, political theory, etc. clamored in response to Krauss’ comments that we are upset not because we resent the work of Krauss, but that we too, see Dr. Krauss as a like-minded fellow-traveller.

I think, in conclusion, it ought to be noted that those of us who clamored have been acknowledged, that Dr. Krauss reciprocated by saying he is a fan of our work too, and that “The Stone” is still clueless.

I’m calling it a win for learning all around.

05/13/12

Rebutting RBH

Dan Kahan and Chris Mooney‘s disputes about what Mooney terms “The Rebublican Brain” are a wonderful thing, because they are serious engagements about a social problem with real depth. Both authors are working to make progress on the question of what it is that hinders efective science communication and scientific literacy across a population that has public education and free speech.  While both are interested in taking on a vision of the human persona in a way that gives up on increasingly unlikely enlightenment era fantasy, Kahan’s research tempers the notion that inefficient science learning and communication is simply the domain of a certain kind of “conservative mind.” That Kahan shares not only his skepticism of this claim, but also his data for all of us to see, is also something rare and wonderful in an era where many academic institutions try to survive by cramming any valuable knowledge behind as many paywalls as possible.

The upshot of Kahan’s doubts about the “Republican Brain Hypothesis” rely in the results of Cognitive Reflection Tests that have been administered to people of different ideological perspectives not showing a significant differentiation in result by ideological preference. Shane Frederick’s piece “Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making” is recommended for both its explanation as to why the results of CRT’s would be such an important test. Frederick’s piece also proves key for explaining Kahan’s suspicion of what is really going on in the disparity between republican and progressive brains: motivated reasoning. To do more complex mental tasks I have to not only be capable of deeper patterns of thought, but I also have to be motivated to employ those more complicated reasoning systems in any case that might require such mental resources as well.

The takeaway from Kahan’s presentation seems to me to be two things:

  1. We all are going to get things wrong, and that it is not so simple as to talk in terms of republican brains and progressive brains.
  2. Cultural elements, and not brain states, inform or impede certain avenues of motivated reasoning. The scheme of social consequences for raising some questions rather than others, whether it be ostracism, censorship, economic sanction, or the attraction of certain kinds of rewards direct are motivated reasoning to reason about some things rather than others, or possibly even to deploy our motivated reasoning more or less frequently.

The findings of Kahan interest me for two reasons. First, because his findings strike me as a promising place to tak democratic epistemology.   Second, and on a more personal level, I cannot help but think about (since I am writing on her theorizing write now) what Hannah Arendt called “the world,” and the similarities between Arendt’s view on cognition and results like this that happen to be pouring out of the cognitive revolution. I am arguing that Hannah Arendt’s skepticism of enlightenment folk psychology enabled her to work through a view of human mental life that anticipated a lot of where we find ourselves today. So both as a general tool of thinking about democratic epistemology and as something to add to my manuscript, Dan Kahan’s research continues, at least for me, to be a gift that keeps on giving.

05/1/12

Cosmology, Physics and Philosophy

“[T}he answers of science will always remain replies to questions asked by men” – Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future

“That’s a good question. I expect it’s because physics has encroached on philosophy. Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then “natural philosophy” became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time there’s a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers. This sense that somehow physicists, because they can’t spell the word “philosophy,” aren’t justified in talking about these things, or haven’t thought deeply about them—” – Lawrence Krauss

 

Lawrence Krauss’ deeply dismissive comments about the relevance of philosophy have been part and parcel of an increasingly growing dispute between philosophy and physics.  Much of the saga can be read through links here. While Krauss did walk back his statements about the uselessness of philosophy, I think that there is an important prevailing lesson about the exchange between physics and philosophy: physicists really, really understand physics well; but philosophers are trained to think about our thinking in a way that has something to say to physicists on the level of conceptualization. I do not mean that philosophy has something to say about M-theory, as no doubt Krauss is correct in saying other physicists are the source for relevant contributions there. Instead, what I mean is that philosophy has something to say about the question, as the Arendt quote indicates above, “who’s asking?”

While Professor Krauss may not think this has any real impact upon his research, it appears to me that Krauss own explanation of the relationship of our perception of reality in relationship to reality itself can have certain kinds of relationships which he has taken for granted, and that further, the useful data his approach has acquired entitles him to take his view with regard to this relationship for granted. Krauss and Hawking both, though they are by no means alone I would imagine, tread a bizarre line between the scientific pragmatism of testing, using a community of inquiry, and belief updating coupled with the bizarre belief that there is some sort of perfect understanding of everything that human beings can somehow possess. To many, if not most philosophers, the second belief would seem to undermine a commitment to the first.  That there is something very un-natural in the stance of a natural philosopher who believes in the scientific method and at the same time thinks that the idea of a progressive, perfectable body of knowledge is somehow achievable.  This does not seem to be how the human mind interacts with the world, and it is not the question of the epistemic status of the findings of physics that most philosophers ought to find troubling, in fact quite the opposite. It is the assertion of the move from facts to meaning that physicis has asserted of late that is troubling. Physicists should know this best. No one gets to assert anything when it comes to human understanding, not if they are serious.

 

UPDATED: What Adam Frank says.

 

03/15/12

Misinformation and Political Conflict Generally

Dan Kahan writes that part of the challenge of appropriately updating our social knowledge about climate change has to do with our having the wrong model of how climate change skepticism is propagated.

Kahan writes that conventional wisdom models climate change skepticism as something that is supplied by institutes, greedy corporations and corrupt researchers desperate for money, attention and influence.  The public in this model, are divided into those intelligent enough to see through this and dupes who unwittingly fall for this argument.

But the model is actually far more demand side oriented than the conventional view holds. Which is to say that a section of the public has crafted in their minds a plausible but not probable explanation as to why climate change skepticism is justified.  This group of sub-optimal believers wants to hear from people who echo the plausible story, and politicians, interest groups, and researchers desperate for money, attention and influence fill this demand.

Not only is the demand side model convincing in the hands Kahan modelling climate change, but I would suspect that it makes for a good starting hypothesis for most political opinion formation in American politics.  Interest groups need money, politicians need votes, universities need students. It is possible to manipulate the sources that these groups go to in order to get their life-blood (aka the public), but the surest way to acquire these things is to “give the people what they want.” Why manufacture political issues if you can just occupy the political space that people have spontaneously created for you to take?

In short, Kahan’s model implies what we might call a cognitive Downsian model.  And I like it.

03/2/12

Olympia Snowe, Citizens United, and the Parliamterianizing of American Politics

 

Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine wrote an op-ed in today’s Washington Post about her reasons for not seeking reelection in the Untied States Senate. She emphasized two reasons in particular: the lack of moderation and compromise in the Senate in terms of political tactics and the inability of the Senate to properly fulfill its function the way it currently conducts its business. Dana Milbank has companion piece in the Post today where he quotes Senator Bennet of Colorado as referring to the Senate “as the Land of Flickering Lights, because the standard of success was we kept the lights on for another two months.”

We might call both problems a result of the “parliamentarianizing” of the legislature in the United States. Why is this happening?  A couple of hypotheses:

  1. The winner-take-all aspect of single member district voting systems creates an “arms race” that drives up the cost of winning elections perpetually.
  2. The increased expense in winning an electoral race has nationalized politics, because without the national resources to draw upon, candidates stand no chance of winning the arms race for the winner-take-all seat.
  3. The nationalization of campaign finance has led to a nationalization of politics that does not stifle competition between parties, but within parties.
  4. The placement of term limits on committee chairmanships has, rather than diversified the holding of political power across all members of the legislature, has concentrated all power in the hands of party leaders instead. Leaving party leadership with no need to respect other locations of power within the system nor the need to respect their elders who may have more experience and more area expertise with regard to the powerful committees they would have served on over long periods of time.
  5. Party discipline and radicalization is the result of the strategic moves of party leaders who can now dictate winners and losers within their party with an iron fist.

Party leaders now award PAC allocations, contributions to the political parties, and award committee memberships AND committee chairmanships. This allows party leaders to force all of their members to stick to the same message, drive hard bargains, send younger members of the legislature on tv to say grossly irresponsible things to try to shift the bargaining position of the party as a whole, and vote unanimously so that debate and compromise become less effective tools for accomplishing political ends.

While the mess we find ourselves in now is one that has multiple causes and indicates system failure at multiple points in the chain of information transmission through our public decision-making mechanisms, it seems to me that one clear lesson from this is that the regrettable nature of the Citizens United v. FEC decision is revealed once and for all. The ruling by the Court has not damaged competition between the parties in terms of which party is more likely to win, but it has damaged the kinds of people who represent both political parties. Citizens United has effectively dumped gasoline on the fire both parties have started to purge themselves of political moderates.

 

02/9/12

Fabio Capello Resigns

Fabiola Capello’s shock resignation as manager of England is a clash between the principle that the manager must be bigger than the players versus the idea that racism is bigger than sport. Fabiola Capello, to the extent he was motivated by principle at all, aligned himself with the former principle against the latter in the case of John Terry. Only the most deluded of people could possibly think that was the right choice and the English FA seemed rather short on regret that Capello resigned in protest.

01/18/12

Arizona Passes Stop Offline Piracy Act…

…also known as banning books.  Brian Leiter describes this as Arizona “going crazy” and a “disgrace.” Certainly true on both counts. But it also seems to be a puzzle of human behavior for which we clearly do not hold the key.  I wish to offer a couple of conjectures to try an explain “How could Arizona do something so terrible?”  These are only untested conjectures, but I think they are a good place to start when looking for mental leverage on the problem.

  1. The obvious and boring part of the explanation: In terms of being able to form a stable mean voting population out of the general population, Arizona is an absolute quagmire. Disproportionately elderly, concentrated populations without enough natural resources to sustain everyone, a sizable population of residents living in the state illegally, racial divisions beween Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, Indigenous Peoples, and Whites of the old transplant and the new transplant variety, the fractures, historical baggage and pressures of new demographic trends make the state a likely candidate for immoderate popular government. To say nothing of the added pressures of nationalized politics, with money and influence from out of state added to to the powder keg.  We might call this obvious, boring explanation portion of the problem the social choice model side of the explanation. There is nothing wrong with the explanation, and none of these claims appear to be rejectable. BUT, they require supplementation, because the facts do not dictate the way that people as they actually are will make decisions in an environment like this.  We need to add…
  2. The cognitive side of the explanation.  The emerging field of Cultural Cognition has demonstrated that the least transigent people are those who have strong attachment between (1) cultural cues and (2) a substantial set of information that happens to be substantial but insufficient to be reliable. Arizona is not just a quagmire of demographic conflicts of interests and cultures, it is a veritable quagmire of cognition. If we take the Cultural Cognition hypothesis, and combine it with known heuristics that have reliability gaps from Kahnemann and Tversky, we get a more complete picture of the problem…
Conclusion: Arizona has a myriad of interrelated problems that have to do with overpopulation, illegal immigration, drug trafficking, the legacy of how Arizona became part of the United States, the flight of people from Los Angeles to the Phoenix-Scottsdale area, and the arizona retirement boom, to name a few factors. These problems take on an enormous degree of complexity given the fact that they are not discrete, which is to say they cannot, in the case of Arizona, be disentangled from any of the other problems they coexist with. Arizonans take cultural cues for trying to solve these problems, they also, as human beings, are susceptible to the “What you see is all there is” (WYSIATI) bias. WSIATI, combined with the common human heuristic of solving an easier problem than the one you are confronted with when confronted with a problem of serious complexity, makes it cognitively attractive for the majority to stifle criticism because they are trying to get to a certain place in the policy space of in Arizona’s social problem set, as the majority they have the power to move institutions towards that space, but they can only use that power if they simplify the policy problem set to get there. Thus, banning books from different cultures with different cognitive cues simplifies the ease in which the majority can coordinate policy.
Lest you be one of those individuals stricken with the terrible affliction that you believe that explaining behavior means excusing behavior, the explanation of why this is happening in Arizona does NOT excuse it in the least bit. As should be clear from the above explanation, the majority is wrong in banning books not merely in principle, but in oversimplifying the difficult problem set that the state of Arizona faces, they are undoubtedly wrong in the policy portfolios they are proposing to solve the states woes. As is hopefully clear, explaining how human beings can collectively make egregiously stupid decisions does not apologize for the decisions, but to the contrary, puts the stupidity clearly in evidence.
But we need to be careful ourselves. Understanding how this can happen allows us to get leverage on how to think about democratic decision-making so that we might practice it more reliably. If our goal was simply to say “shame on Arizona,” we would be making the same heuristic mistake of solving the easy problem (Q: “Is Arizona morally culpable in banning books?” A: duh) rather than the hard ones (Q: “How can Arizona be a better place?” or Q: “How can I keep my state from making the sames mistake?”) The first question makes us feel better, and as son as we are comfortable with assigning blame, we have answered the question and get the mental satisfaction of a question answered and a job well done. But aside from the stimulating of a few chemicals in our private mental soup, nothing else changes when we answer the first question. The second set of questions is where our intelligence is truly tested, and the consequences of our thoughts and actions are truly reflected in the world itself.