When any given field takes half a lifetime of study to master, who can compare and contrast and properly weight the rate of progress in nanotechnology and cryptography and superstring theory and 610 other disciplines? Indeed, how do we even know whether the so-called scientists are not just lawmakers and politicians in disguise, as some conservatives suspect in fields as disparate as climate change, evolutionary biology, and embryonic-stem-cell research, and as I have come to suspect in almost all fields? [!!! -- SB]
I don’t necessarily dispute the point he makes. But I would like to offer as an alternative perspective Mencius Moldbug’s suggestion that paleoclimatology and climate modelling are not “science” – or at any rate we are not “cleaving reality at its joints” by using the term science to refer to both physics, with its adequately falsifiable hypotheses and controllable experiments, and the likes of climate change and economic modelling. Moldbug regards these as cargo cult sciences which derive a spurious aura of authenticity from their appropriation of the term “science”, and argues that their inherent resistance to the power of the scientific method allows false beliefs to proliferate in these areas if these beliefs serve the interests of political power (which is welded to the University system and its ability to manipulate public opinion.)
There is a significantly greater likelihood that “climate scientists” and “climate science” as a whole are systematically corrupt as truth-finders, in comparison to (for example) physicists. So Moldbug would be more likely to attribute intellectual stagnation to this corrupted-by-power “scientism” of the University system than to the existence of “overspecialized, insular scientific fields” in particular (although the two are not mutually exclusive).
The current crisis of housing and financial leverage contains many hidden links to broader questions concerning long-term progress in science and technology. On one hand, the lack of easy progress makes leverage more dangerous, because when something goes wrong, macroeconomic growth cannot offer a salve; time will not cure liquidity or solvency problems in a world where little grows or improves with time.
Again to supply the Moldbuggian perspective, the ultimate cause of the economic crisis is maturity transformation, of which fractional reserve banking (with its scalar rather than temporally-based accounting) is one example. Frequent banking crises are to be expected until such a time as the maturity-mismatching banking system can no longer reply on implict loan guarantees from the state, and therefore ceases to exist (since in a genuinely free market economic system, banks that practise maturity transformation inevitably go bust and stay bust).
According to this analysis, “liquidity problems” are in fact evidence of the free market assigning a perfectly reasonable (non-MT) value to the overpriced assets in the banking system. And quantitative easing is a means of attempting to push the system from this equilibrium back into yet another cycle of unstable maturity-transformation practices.
Therefore (if one finds Moldbug persuasive) at best the economic crisis has merely proximate links to “long-term progress in science and technology”.
I can’t supply evidence in the space available! These are complicated topics that cannot be explained or justified briefly. It’s merely an invitation for people to consider an alternative, but coherent viewpoint (hence all the links). That is why I did not claim these analyses to be true but merely described them as Mencius Moldbug’s opinion.
EDIT: Okay, to be slightly more clear. Arguing from principles and representative quotations is a good way to give evidence for claims about the way people say things—postmodernism at its best. It is not a good way to get evidence about the world, and can even be counterproductive because of signal to noise problems.
I don’t see that there’s a better way to divine the truth in historical, economic, and political matters. Bayes’s Theorem isn’t much use when you have no decent numbers to put into it—regardless of the fact that it is true. How would you conduct a worthwhile Bayesian analysis of the proposition that neocameralism is a superior form of government to democracy? Have I any reason to believe that such an analysis would be better than Moldbug’s deductive reasoning? Bear in mind also that statistics are not necessarily trustworthy or fully informative.
I find that a sharp mind—Moldbug’s is extremely sharp indeed—is capable of achieving a high signal-to-noise ratio using this style of reasoning where others might not.
After all, a direct confrontation of the reasoning style you disparage and an approach I expect you might consider more “evidence-based” is found in macroeconomics—Austrians as literary economists, Keynesians as quantitative economists. I’m sure you’ll agree that the hegemonic Keynesians have not exactly covered themselves in glory.
Arguing from principles and representative quotations is a good way to give evidence for claims about the way people say things
I can only interpret this as the idea that all speech and writing provides evidence only about the speaker or author himself. I disagree in the strongest terms!
I don’t see that there’s a better way to divine the truth in historical, economic, and political matters.
I didn’t ask for a full statistical analysis. Although it would certainly be nice, it seems like a lot of work—deductive reasoning is but a tiny subset of probabilistic reasoning. However, I suppose one could use random sampling methods to make sure that you didn’t go far wrong. New field name: asymptotically correct history.
Anyhow, what I said was lacking was evidence in general—arguments that are harder to make when false than when true. This sort of thing often does mean statistics, but not because statistics are magical—because when you use statistics it’s easy to see when you leave stuff out.
I find that a sharp mind—Moldbug’s is extremely sharp indeed—is capable of achieving a high signal-to-noise ratio using this style of reasoning where others might not.
Correct reasoning is not a magical power, it’s a process that anyone can follow. A->B to ~B->~A, non-replicable reasoning is highly suspicious.
After all, a direct confrontation of the reasoning style you disparage and an approach I expect you might consider more “evidence-based” is found in macroeconomics
If we drag economics into this we’ll be here all day :P Anyhow, I’d rather pick an example with representation from the “literary” side, and maybe a control group. Unfortunately, no clean examples come to mind.
Arguing from principles and representative quotations is a good way to give evidence for claims about the way people say things
I can only interpret this as the idea that all speech and writing provides evidence only about the speaker or author himself. I disagree in the strongest terms!
I don’t necessarily dispute the point he makes. But I would like to offer as an alternative perspective Mencius Moldbug’s suggestion that paleoclimatology and climate modelling are not “science” – or at any rate we are not “cleaving reality at its joints” by using the term science to refer to both physics, with its adequately falsifiable hypotheses and controllable experiments, and the likes of climate change and economic modelling. Moldbug regards these as cargo cult sciences which derive a spurious aura of authenticity from their appropriation of the term “science”, and argues that their inherent resistance to the power of the scientific method allows false beliefs to proliferate in these areas if these beliefs serve the interests of political power (which is welded to the University system and its ability to manipulate public opinion.)
There is a significantly greater likelihood that “climate scientists” and “climate science” as a whole are systematically corrupt as truth-finders, in comparison to (for example) physicists. So Moldbug would be more likely to attribute intellectual stagnation to this corrupted-by-power “scientism” of the University system than to the existence of “overspecialized, insular scientific fields” in particular (although the two are not mutually exclusive).
Again to supply the Moldbuggian perspective, the ultimate cause of the economic crisis is maturity transformation, of which fractional reserve banking (with its scalar rather than temporally-based accounting) is one example. Frequent banking crises are to be expected until such a time as the maturity-mismatching banking system can no longer reply on implict loan guarantees from the state, and therefore ceases to exist (since in a genuinely free market economic system, banks that practise maturity transformation inevitably go bust and stay bust).
According to this analysis, “liquidity problems” are in fact evidence of the free market assigning a perfectly reasonable (non-MT) value to the overpriced assets in the banking system. And quantitative easing is a means of attempting to push the system from this equilibrium back into yet another cycle of unstable maturity-transformation practices. Therefore (if one finds Moldbug persuasive) at best the economic crisis has merely proximate links to “long-term progress in science and technology”.
Not much evidence in that thar persuasion.
I can’t supply evidence in the space available! These are complicated topics that cannot be explained or justified briefly. It’s merely an invitation for people to consider an alternative, but coherent viewpoint (hence all the links). That is why I did not claim these analyses to be true but merely described them as Mencius Moldbug’s opinion.
Oh, I was primarily referring to the links :P
EDIT: Okay, to be slightly more clear. Arguing from principles and representative quotations is a good way to give evidence for claims about the way people say things—postmodernism at its best. It is not a good way to get evidence about the world, and can even be counterproductive because of signal to noise problems.
I don’t see that there’s a better way to divine the truth in historical, economic, and political matters. Bayes’s Theorem isn’t much use when you have no decent numbers to put into it—regardless of the fact that it is true. How would you conduct a worthwhile Bayesian analysis of the proposition that neocameralism is a superior form of government to democracy? Have I any reason to believe that such an analysis would be better than Moldbug’s deductive reasoning? Bear in mind also that statistics are not necessarily trustworthy or fully informative.
I find that a sharp mind—Moldbug’s is extremely sharp indeed—is capable of achieving a high signal-to-noise ratio using this style of reasoning where others might not.
After all, a direct confrontation of the reasoning style you disparage and an approach I expect you might consider more “evidence-based” is found in macroeconomics—Austrians as literary economists, Keynesians as quantitative economists. I’m sure you’ll agree that the hegemonic Keynesians have not exactly covered themselves in glory.
I can only interpret this as the idea that all speech and writing provides evidence only about the speaker or author himself. I disagree in the strongest terms!
I didn’t ask for a full statistical analysis. Although it would certainly be nice, it seems like a lot of work—deductive reasoning is but a tiny subset of probabilistic reasoning. However, I suppose one could use random sampling methods to make sure that you didn’t go far wrong. New field name: asymptotically correct history.
Anyhow, what I said was lacking was evidence in general—arguments that are harder to make when false than when true. This sort of thing often does mean statistics, but not because statistics are magical—because when you use statistics it’s easy to see when you leave stuff out.
Correct reasoning is not a magical power, it’s a process that anyone can follow. A->B to ~B->~A, non-replicable reasoning is highly suspicious.
If we drag economics into this we’ll be here all day :P Anyhow, I’d rather pick an example with representation from the “literary” side, and maybe a control group. Unfortunately, no clean examples come to mind.
Please interpret it literally.