My own instant reaction, admittedly based entirely on subjective experience, is that the premise of the article is not true. If I and my circle of acquaintances are a representative part of “most people” then “most people” are perfectly happy with the concept of relying on facts to inform and guide decisions.
The problem that complicates my life is attempting to determine what the facts actually are. This has never been easy, but the relatively recent proliferation of human knowledge (i.e. the total number of facts that humans collectively know) has made this job much more complex.
As an aside, it is an interesting thought that perhaps this very complexity implies that collective human knowledge tends to a maximum limit over time, and it would of course be at least theoretically possible that such a limit might fall below the threshold for creating AGI, which might explain why we haven’t encountered one yet (if indeed we haven’t) :-).
Bact to the issue at hand . Clearly I am not able to investigate every phenomenon myself so I am forced to rely on others. But who should I rely on?
the media have long since surrendered their right to my trust
politically funded NGOs are lie machines churning out narratives that support a political position irrespective of underlying reality
sadly it increasingly appears that academia is no longer trustworthy either. Corrupted by corporate profit incentives, the grant system, academic politics, and the outsized incentive to publish exciting results, our scientists have systematically engaged in questionable methodologies until we have reached the point where, according to recent studies, the majority of published articles turn out to be unreproducible. (Another aside: I have also wondered whether we are over-funding academia, resulting in too many scientists of only medicore intelligence who actually act to retard collective understanding, much as an unskilled engineer can reduce the productivity of a team of more skilled engineers).
it is also true that many disciplines are, for ethical reasons, hard to subject to rational enquiry. When controlled experiements cannot be conducted easily or at all, the “facts” are very, very hard to determine, and it is all too easy to reach conclusions which result only from long chains of complex and sophisticated rationalization. Economics is especially prone to this, which is probably why economists are notoriously unable to make acccurate predictions. And consequently, for example, I find the idea that a Brexit supporter must be ignorant of “facts” to be very questionable.
It often requires a great deal of knowledge to even understand and apply facts correctly. For example, in any internet discussion on the benefits of free trade it is almost inevitable that someobody will cite Ricardo’s Theory of comparative advantage within the first couple of posts. Such an individual may well claim that this is a “fact” which “proves” that free trade is a good idea and rail at the ignorant fool who persists in further disagreement. But of course Ricardo’s theory, while certainly clever, pertinent and logically correct does not by itself prove that free trade is beneficial. It completely ignores the impact of free movement of capital, specialization of the labor force, changes to the value of pre-existing capital investments, the marginal value of dollars to the inevitable winners and losers, and many other factors and consequences.
I can’t help thinking that in order to overcome this problem we need a massive cultural shift towards a more deontological system of ethics: a commitment to finding and telling the truth no matter what it is and a refusal to tolerate liars, even when we are sympathetic to their aims. Perhaps that way we can start to trust our journalists and our scientists again—which would make all our lives massively easier.
My own instant reaction, admittedly based entirely on subjective experience, is that the premise of the article is not true. If I and my circle of acquaintances are a representative part of “most people” then “most people” are perfectly happy with the concept of relying on facts to inform and guide decisions.
The problem that complicates my life is attempting to determine what the facts actually are. This has never been easy, but the relatively recent proliferation of human knowledge (i.e. the total number of facts that humans collectively know) has made this job much more complex.
As an aside, it is an interesting thought that perhaps this very complexity implies that collective human knowledge tends to a maximum limit over time, and it would of course be at least theoretically possible that such a limit might fall below the threshold for creating AGI, which might explain why we haven’t encountered one yet (if indeed we haven’t) :-).
Bact to the issue at hand . Clearly I am not able to investigate every phenomenon myself so I am forced to rely on others. But who should I rely on?
the media have long since surrendered their right to my trust
politically funded NGOs are lie machines churning out narratives that support a political position irrespective of underlying reality
sadly it increasingly appears that academia is no longer trustworthy either. Corrupted by corporate profit incentives, the grant system, academic politics, and the outsized incentive to publish exciting results, our scientists have systematically engaged in questionable methodologies until we have reached the point where, according to recent studies, the majority of published articles turn out to be unreproducible. (Another aside: I have also wondered whether we are over-funding academia, resulting in too many scientists of only medicore intelligence who actually act to retard collective understanding, much as an unskilled engineer can reduce the productivity of a team of more skilled engineers).
it is also true that many disciplines are, for ethical reasons, hard to subject to rational enquiry. When controlled experiements cannot be conducted easily or at all, the “facts” are very, very hard to determine, and it is all too easy to reach conclusions which result only from long chains of complex and sophisticated rationalization. Economics is especially prone to this, which is probably why economists are notoriously unable to make acccurate predictions. And consequently, for example, I find the idea that a Brexit supporter must be ignorant of “facts” to be very questionable.
It often requires a great deal of knowledge to even understand and apply facts correctly. For example, in any internet discussion on the benefits of free trade it is almost inevitable that someobody will cite Ricardo’s Theory of comparative advantage within the first couple of posts. Such an individual may well claim that this is a “fact” which “proves” that free trade is a good idea and rail at the ignorant fool who persists in further disagreement. But of course Ricardo’s theory, while certainly clever, pertinent and logically correct does not by itself prove that free trade is beneficial. It completely ignores the impact of free movement of capital, specialization of the labor force, changes to the value of pre-existing capital investments, the marginal value of dollars to the inevitable winners and losers, and many other factors and consequences.
I can’t help thinking that in order to overcome this problem we need a massive cultural shift towards a more deontological system of ethics: a commitment to finding and telling the truth no matter what it is and a refusal to tolerate liars, even when we are sympathetic to their aims. Perhaps that way we can start to trust our journalists and our scientists again—which would make all our lives massively easier.