Pinker makes some good points in his essay, but he seems unaware of how someone not committed to Progressivism might read it. He cites Wikipedia favorably but fails to mention how terribly biased it is whenever the topic is anything touching on politics. He calls for uncritical reliance on experts, as in the case of the mRNA vaccines, seemingly unaware that a lot of adverse evidence has emerged regarding their safety and efficacy.
Re: "The third key to public irrationality is to consider how we unlearn these folk intuitions and acquire a more sophisticated understanding. It’s certainly not by each of us exercising our inner genius. It’s by trusting legitimate expertise: scientists, journalists, historians, government record-keepers, and responsible, fact-checked authors. After all, few of us can really justify our beliefs by ourselves, including the true ones." -- Steven Pinker, essay at embedded link
An even more sophisticated understanding would acknowledge:
(a) Legitimate experts often disagree among themselves, especially about issues debated in the public sphere.
(b) Some crucial institutions of constitutional democracy are *adversarial systems,* which intrinsically involve competition of rival narratives. Examples are political parties, elections, jury trials, editorial pages of a free press, think tanks, and public intellectuals (esp. rival economists).
(c) Disagreements among experts, and properly adversarial institutions, place citizens in a quandary about whom to believe. Let's call this the citizen's dilemma.
What is a citizen to do?
1. Own the dilemma. Be willing to say: "I don't know. Nor do the experts, who disagree among themselves."
2. If action is necessary, use other criteria of wise deference about whom to believe; for example, proven character, constructiveness, willingness to show one's homework.
3. If action is necessary, be willing to randomize (flip a 'coin' with reasonably weighted probabilities).
The citizen's dilemma has structural implications:
4. A presumption in favor of voluntary social interactions (institutions like markets and associations) rather than government power (which entails tyranny of the majority and corruption).
5. Where government power is better than voluntary social interactions, a presumption in favor of decentralized government.
6. A presumption in favor of institutions that enable *exit,* as a counterweight to *voice* (the sphere of the citizen's dilemma).
7. A presumption in favor of institutions in which participants have skin in the game.
Until very recently I worked for a fully remote startup. I’m a writer and reader, and so my first instinct to get buy-in and share knowledge is to write. But this usually didn’t get engagement. People were too busy.
To get them to actually engage with what I was saying I HAD to get in front of their faces with a meeting where I would almost literally just say out loud what I had shared in written form with them already.
Part of this is about credibly signaling what’s important. There were reams of written material sent around at this place, it’s very easy to produce and to distribute. Booking a meeting for it at least shows that I care enough about this particular issue to spend my time explaining it to you, and therefore that it’s likely to be important. In this environment, ignoring most of the circulated material and focussing only on those things that someone cared enough about to tell me in person was not a bad strategy, and I certainly did it too!
I tried a few things to try to change this dynamic, but didnt make much progress. Something I’m going to think hard about at my next place.
AK writes: If you’re my type of manager, then you bring people into a meeting room in order to constructively complain, argue, and brainstorm. To feed off of one another, not to be fed a presentation or an update.
Mission meetings, 100% for sure. But "process meetings" are different, seemingly invented to align but nowadays akin to a popularity contest for important "stakeholders" to have a say in any manner of decision. Beware of attending *any* process meeting.
When a robot can play major league baseball under the same rules as a human--pitching, batting, fielding, sliding into first--under the same power constraints as a human (100W, or maybe a little more), then I'll take artificial intelligence seriously.
Pinker makes some good points in his essay, but he seems unaware of how someone not committed to Progressivism might read it. He cites Wikipedia favorably but fails to mention how terribly biased it is whenever the topic is anything touching on politics. He calls for uncritical reliance on experts, as in the case of the mRNA vaccines, seemingly unaware that a lot of adverse evidence has emerged regarding their safety and efficacy.
Re: "The third key to public irrationality is to consider how we unlearn these folk intuitions and acquire a more sophisticated understanding. It’s certainly not by each of us exercising our inner genius. It’s by trusting legitimate expertise: scientists, journalists, historians, government record-keepers, and responsible, fact-checked authors. After all, few of us can really justify our beliefs by ourselves, including the true ones." -- Steven Pinker, essay at embedded link
An even more sophisticated understanding would acknowledge:
(a) Legitimate experts often disagree among themselves, especially about issues debated in the public sphere.
(b) Some crucial institutions of constitutional democracy are *adversarial systems,* which intrinsically involve competition of rival narratives. Examples are political parties, elections, jury trials, editorial pages of a free press, think tanks, and public intellectuals (esp. rival economists).
(c) Disagreements among experts, and properly adversarial institutions, place citizens in a quandary about whom to believe. Let's call this the citizen's dilemma.
What is a citizen to do?
1. Own the dilemma. Be willing to say: "I don't know. Nor do the experts, who disagree among themselves."
2. If action is necessary, use other criteria of wise deference about whom to believe; for example, proven character, constructiveness, willingness to show one's homework.
3. If action is necessary, be willing to randomize (flip a 'coin' with reasonably weighted probabilities).
The citizen's dilemma has structural implications:
4. A presumption in favor of voluntary social interactions (institutions like markets and associations) rather than government power (which entails tyranny of the majority and corruption).
5. Where government power is better than voluntary social interactions, a presumption in favor of decentralized government.
6. A presumption in favor of institutions that enable *exit,* as a counterweight to *voice* (the sphere of the citizen's dilemma).
7. A presumption in favor of institutions in which participants have skin in the game.
Until very recently I worked for a fully remote startup. I’m a writer and reader, and so my first instinct to get buy-in and share knowledge is to write. But this usually didn’t get engagement. People were too busy.
To get them to actually engage with what I was saying I HAD to get in front of their faces with a meeting where I would almost literally just say out loud what I had shared in written form with them already.
Part of this is about credibly signaling what’s important. There were reams of written material sent around at this place, it’s very easy to produce and to distribute. Booking a meeting for it at least shows that I care enough about this particular issue to spend my time explaining it to you, and therefore that it’s likely to be important. In this environment, ignoring most of the circulated material and focussing only on those things that someone cared enough about to tell me in person was not a bad strategy, and I certainly did it too!
I tried a few things to try to change this dynamic, but didnt make much progress. Something I’m going to think hard about at my next place.
AK writes: If you’re my type of manager, then you bring people into a meeting room in order to constructively complain, argue, and brainstorm. To feed off of one another, not to be fed a presentation or an update.
Mission meetings, 100% for sure. But "process meetings" are different, seemingly invented to align but nowadays akin to a popularity contest for important "stakeholders" to have a say in any manner of decision. Beware of attending *any* process meeting.
When a robot can play major league baseball under the same rules as a human--pitching, batting, fielding, sliding into first--under the same power constraints as a human (100W, or maybe a little more), then I'll take artificial intelligence seriously.