An Exam for the Social Code
a set of questions
I am trying to come up with exam questions that can test how well someone has absorbed key concepts from The Social Code. The exam will be in the form of a conversation with the AI professor. The feedback that the user will receive will be qualitative. It will be based on how correctly they employ the concepts and avoid basic misunderstanding.
I could be wrong, but I think that the goals for this type of seminar are less measurable than those for, say, a course in algebra or anatomy. I am trying to offer students models of the world, and those models are themselves imperfect.
When we teach economics, we often say that our goal is for students to be able to “think like an economist.” We might test for that by giving out problems involving supply and demand diagrams, but students can pass those and still not apply economic thinking to real-world policy questions.
One way to approach coming up with the exam for the seminar is to ask: what do I hope that a student who has sat through the seminar does not believe?
The top misconceptions I hope to have steered someone away from are:
The problems of organizing a large society are simple and can be solved using the same principles and methods that work in a small group.
The truth about what is best for society is obvious, and we know it. But misguided or misinformed people fail to see it, and evil people are out to keep the truth from being incorporated into policy.
People who argue on social media are demonstrating how discourse must be conducted.
It is easy to handle the information environment. Just learn to think for yourself.
We don’t need to think about our culture as something that undergoes evolution. We can design social rules from first principles.
Perhaps I can do worse than just put these propositions out there and ask the student to articulate what is wrong with them.
Here are some other questions I have considered. Comments welcome.
1. Suppose that a study shows that rent control causes a significant reduction in housing supply. Would praise for the methods used in the study be more credible coming from an economist who supports rent control or an economist who opposes rent control? Explain.
2. You are asked to design a content-moderation policy for a popular social media app. What types of rules would you have, and how would you justify them to users with diverse opinions?
3. Could elites have maintained trust from the general public as the Internet information revolution unfolded, or was a decline in trust inevitable?
4. Some studies show a correlation between social media use and depression. How can we arrive at a sufficiently reliable level of knowledge of this issue to confidently recommend policy?
5. What might be done with immigration policy to reconcile the positions of conservatives, progressives, and libertarians? Are there irreconcilable differences?
6. If you could set up an incentive system for better public discourse, what would you reward and how would you reward it?
7. Debate both sides of the proposition "Social science is inherently too unreliable to be used in public policy." Take first one side, and then the other. Give examples that support each position.
8. Debate both sides of the proposition "Unregulated technological innovation is too disruptive." Take first one side, and then the other.
9. Design a "disagreement protocol" for a town meeting to discuss the issues of traffic, zoning, and development. What sort of rules, norms, and incentives would foster constructive discussion?
I'm interested in using it for a class I teach. I would suggest improving public discourse is going to be less interesting for students compared to the other content. Also I think "Call on Me" should have some kind of prompt to help get started instead of being completely open-ended. And perhaps an upgrade for the aesthetics of the UI, you don't want it to look like a Word document.
Two comments. First, as part of the seminar curriculum, or as a basic reading requirement, I'd include a list of fallacies of logic. (Many graphics summarizing this topic are available on the web.) This comment is in reference to item (3) under misconceptions - "People who argue on social media are demonstrating how discourse must be conducted." I cannot count how many times I've been in discussions on social media and point out my correspondents' logical fallacies. That number is virtually identical to the number of correspondents who don't know or understand what those fallacies are. Second, is question (8) - "Debate both sides of the proposition 'Unregulated technological innovation is too disruptive.' Take first one side, and then the other." This approach is applicable to all questions and discussion topics. A sign that a student is genuinely open minded and intellectual (intellectually curious) and is learning would be that he or she could argue both sides of a debate effectively.