Anti-expertise is a symptom of Authoritarianism merely disguised as a symptom of ignorance: We need not and should not compete with our inexpert interpretations of climate science or social justice

I have been accused of arrogance, and there is some truth in the accusation. Not only do I not believe that all people have prepared equally to assess complex problems involving society, economics, history, and politics, much less laboratory science, but I think it is actually much safer to assume that very few of us can assess many problems outside our immediate and narrow areas of expertise.

If you have conducted any peer-reviewed, published research – or even if you have merely written a dissertation for a masters or doctoral degree – you are aware that a good dose of “critical thinking” and even more than a modicum of elbow grease do not get you very far. Great critical thinking skills are woefully insufficient to demonstrate capability with the methodologies of your chosen discipline, capacity to collect and assemble data appropriate for your hypotheses, then tease out special empirical and testing problems you face, find just the right statistical tests to apply, and then make sense of it all. Give me a genius with an IQ of 175 and I am quite confident that I can pose a problem that an ordinary graduate student with a couple of years of specialized training can solve faster and better. (There are types of problems the genius will solve better -- but they have little to do with 99% of research.) Give me an ordinary guy, earnest about being an honest citizen (rare these days), and he frankly doesn’t stand a chance.

Despite the widespread view disseminated on social media that "idiots" on the other side of the political spectrum “fail to understand the scientific method,” I am in the arrogant minority who would bet large sums of money that more than 95% of us don’t understand the “scientific method,” if what you mean by that idea is that someone could assess all research in a randomly-chosen field, such as climatology, and then independently – without recourse to their club hymnal – assess the critical inferences one should derive from that research and then determine optimal policy to address it. To those of us who have been humbled by vastly simpler problems within our own sub-disciplines – those of us who have spent more than a year on a single question trying to get it right -- social media gurus who want you to believe that they have a better command of climate change than climatologists, vaccine research than epidemiologists, stock markets and tax policy than economists, seem – frankly – naïve, to put it kindly.

Those of us who spent four to ten years in graduate study, then decades more doing careful work, cannot agree with the idea that a democratic mind – or a good person – should find everyone’s opinion on every subject equally valid. If this makes us arrogant, so be it.  People who know me well have said that I am compulsively open-minded –- I excessively solicit opinion from people in wide-ranging fields and professions.  I believe a good argument can and should stand on its own bottom, and anyone willing to advance it thoroughly and honestly deserves a hearing.  Besides, Gardner's geniuses were notably interdisciplinary and that seems right to me.  But this does not reduce to the odd complaint that everyone has a right to their own opinion.  A layman advancing a thorough argument is not the same as someone advancing a self-dealing opinion with nothing to support the case but a demand that everyone's opinion is equal.

Notably, many of those asserting the idea that all opinions are equal are not being honest. If they witness two athletes – one who has trained full-time for ten years and another part-time for two years – they are not reluctant to give the nod to the more committed athlete. If they had to hire one of two candidates – one with full time experience going back decades and the other with a smattering of experience over a few years – they hire the better, more experienced candidate. And when their child is sick, they do not take her to a witch doctor, but seek out an MD with a track record.

And their view of who deserves human dignity grossly fails the basic ethical demand that all humans be afforded dignity – they have 101 caveats and qualifications for who should get to go to school, be fed lunch, get a job, or even cross a border seeking asylum -- so it is not a universal dignity that moves them. In fact, it is only when they wish to violate the basic Elsterian principle of rationality – that our desires may not influence our beliefs – and they wish to assert that their desires about the unprovable are legitimate “beliefs,” that they screech that the experts are being arrogant for not saying that their fairy dust should be given equal weight to science’s atomic particles. All of a sudden, it seems, all voices matter.

But this is not merely a critique of the politically-correct Right (who shout about political correctness until it is actually about politics itself -- then, no one's feelings should be hurt and everyone's opinion should get a participation ribbon). I am also criticizing the Left who, while generally better educated, may be kidding themselves about what is wrong with the USA in 2019. We are not failing because people who support Trump cannot understand the scientific method. As I say above, very few do. Trump’s supporters are a mix of a some truly ignorant people, true, but those ranks include many angry sadists, many who live for their Schadenfreude, many who enjoy the 16 lies a day that Trump is being recorded as saying in public media – and enjoy the suffering those lies cause.

This is a proposal that we stop suggesting that people use “critical thinking” and the “scientific method” to assess major scientific and policy matters. Frankly, the unpopular position on this one seems right to me: go back to believing experts. You cannot replicate their research – not remotely. And no matter how many YouTube videos or inflammatory polemics you digest, you cannot improve on their research.

Believe them without discrimination? Of course not. Question their conflicts of interest – is there corporate money back there? Question their credentials. Question the ordinary biases of science – remember Tuskegee. Or even question their real politik – the FDA, even when it is functioning well, is 8 years behind – that’s what being politically cautious means. So, research done in the last 8 years is worth reviewing to determine if the finding has changed. But don’t kid yourself and think you will do the research yourself – unless that’s your field.

My arrogant idea for tonight is this: the problem with the Right is far deeper than their lack of a good education. They cannot, much less will not, ever invest in enough education for it to matter. But they are not dangerous because of that. They are dangerous because it serves very selfish and cruel ends for them to reject expertise out-of-hand. That is, they are not ignorant so much that they want you – indeed, everyone – to be ignorant. Virtually all fascists, all authoritarians in history have turned the angry Right into a weapon against experts because in order to take over and steal and destroy everything the experts who would warn us of their intentions must be removed from positions of influence.

As for the good and decent citizen – stop fretting climate science, vaccine science, the economics of general well-being, the sociology of racial justice, the Constitutionality of emoluments and the criminality of obstruction. Let those devoting their lives to those topics work them out. You cannot answer those questions– and shouldn’t have to answer them! Your job was always to believe the experts within reason and inject your own values and priorities into the political process to elect officials who would advance your priorities as well as possible.

It’s not about critical thinking or education. Trump supporters are not still behind him because they can’t do statistical inference, and more memes describing his 1001st crime against the law and/or humanity will not change them. Their values and yours are very far apart. Your job is to do what you can to advance your values – save the American Republic, if that’s your thing, or save the human species from extinction, if that’s it, or end the concentration camps before you go, or push back hard against the War on Women and the Ongoing and Never Ending War on People of Color. But it’s time we give a rest to the crazy social media idea that everybody should have an opinion about climate science, tax policy, the specific role of NATO in safeguarding the world from the advance of Putin’s oligarchs.

These are your options: (1) believe the consensus of experts in the field; (2) differ from the experts in very narrow and specific ways for extraordinarily good reason (e.g., you discover corruption at Tuskegee), or (3) reject expertise and be a grave danger to modernity. If you are not trying to throw us back into the Dark Ages, or support an Authoritarian Coup, this is not an option for you.

"Capitalism versus Socialism" is not a helpful debate

Capitalism versus Socialism is a cop-out debate. No one has the genius or prescience to predict their outcomes without far more context and a lot of luck. The greatest minds of the past three centuries have come down on both sides. Social media chatter is not going to improve upon Malthus, Mill, Carlyle, Marx & Engels, Dickens, Marshall, Fisher, Keynes, Von Mises & Hayek, Polanyi, Samuelson, Arrow, and Sen. We must infer that this is not a helpful question.

Keynes was probably right that the principal political challenge of humankind was to simultaneously solve three problems: economic efficiency, social justice, and individual freedom.

What we know for certain is this:

1) Unfettered capitalism must fail. The most intelligent advocates for Capitalism say so and say precisely why. And it does fail — in many cases vast majorities are impoverished while tiny minorities flourish -- leading to what Polyanyi referred to ironically as "a stark utopia." Further, “one dollar, one vote” is inconsistent with sustainable democracy. Finally, unfettered capitalism is not only unjust, it is inefficient — despite widespread confusion about this.

2) Regulated capitalism or social democracy can in (deep) theory work — but policy makers and regulators must be honest and be protected by herculean meta/regulations against "capture" (the idea advanced, sometimes disingenuously, by "public choice" economists. If political agents can be prevented from exploiting their power badly, Keynes’ three challenges might be met better than in the unfettered brand of capitalism

3) Socialism or central planning can also work in theory — again, it has a chance whereas unfettered capitalism must get it wrong — but in this case the challenges of preventing abuses of political power are even greater than in social democracies in which democratic pressures are typically stronger. All three goals might be met, but most historical experiments with socialism (and its right wing cousin, fascism) saw individual liberty crushed. It is prudent to be wary.

4) Theocracies assume away the importance of efficiency, justice and liberty — and, not surprisingly, do very badly against those metrics. But for those singing from those hymnals, sanctifying the law may work.

5) Communism — the closest human beings can get to “the soul of the white ant” (a collective identity that deeply satisfies the Clan impulse) — can fall prey to a particularly pernicious form of inequality of voice — dissent gets treated much the way it does in theocracies (as heresy) -- and in practice can be inefficient, lacking in liberty, and still unjust.

6) In ALL cases, the failures devolve from inequality in power and voice, whether those failures originate in inequalities of wealth or political access. There are plenty of OTHER problems with each, but a rational way to design a system that succeeds at promoting efficiency, justice and liberty is to build in safeguards against significant inequalities in incomes, wealth, opportunities, and political voice — including the vote, the power of dissent, diversity of representation.

Of course, the protection of the minority from the majority (even when all vote freely) is also important and only well addressed by the brilliant design of certain types of Constitutions (like the American Constitution) — those that define and defend the inalienable rights of all (albeit imperfectly if the writers wish to sustain the power of some over others).

To paraphrase Bill Clinton (who got it wrong), “It’s POWER, stupid.”

In any form of government, we fail if we fail to safeguard the weak from the strong. Fighting about “socialism” may be a social-media gimmick, but it is not worthy of our attention.

The Romans said to ask: cui bono? (Who benefits?) If you wish to contribute to a discussion of comparative political systems, this is the question you must ask: is unequal power being leveraged and, if so, how can we protect the weak and restore a balance of power? Ethics 101 says moral action enhances the dignity of all human beings: does your policy meet this requirement?

As Benjamin Martin (the "Swamp Fox") advises his young sons in the film Patriot -- aim small, miss small. The big critiques (Socialism is bad! Capitalism is cruel!) aim at the side of the barn and miss by a wide mark. Keep the discussions narrow and precise enough to hope to get close to saying something useful.

Is a confessional really necessary?

It is not infrequently noted that much of the modern Left's focus on identity politics seems inconsistent, even at odds, with Marx's detailed and deterministic class analysis. I have noted as much, myself.
But there are connections, some subtle, and some can only be illustrated by obscure references.
In the one and only edition of the Franco-German Annals -- written and published in the early 1840s, thus before any of Marx's major work (and thus his vision of the future) -- Marx wrote:
"Every individual must admit to himself that he has no precise idea about what ought to happen.
However, this very defect turns to the advantage of the new movement, for it means we do not anticipate the world with our dogmas but instead attempt to discover the new world through the critique of the old...We shall simply show the world why it is struggling...Our program must be: the reform of consciousness...the self-clarification of the wishes of the age...What is needed above all is a confession, and nothing more than that. To obtain forgiveness for its sins, mankind needs only to declare them for what they are."
So something in the water of the revolutionist who wishes for justice for the downtrodden is consistent with this need to first wring a confession out of the defenders of the status quo before moving on to build a fairer society. Whether it a confession about class injustice, or about gender, race or sexual orientation. We saw evidence of that in the re-education camps.
To the ears of a modern liberal (as opposed to a modern leftist) this step is discomfiting -- why not just move on to build a better future? To the ears of a modern centrist, my sense is that this focus on consciousness raising is almost mystifying. To the ears of a modern conservative, it seems to raise hackles. And to the ears of a modern evangelical, it challenges their view that long before Marx all this was already sorted out and they have all the answers.
But to the ears of a modern leftist -- this consciousness-raising process, resolving itself in a mass confessional, seems as essential for moving forward as is the need for theory before practice for scholars, blueprints before construction for architects, and diagnosis before prognosis for medical doctors. And this is somehow rooted in the revolutionists' view that we cannot move from here to there without a deeply felt shame in the injustices we have advanced, perhaps because the difficulties are too great unless we understand, and deeply, that we must. Or perhaps the view is that to succeed at stripping the 1% of their privileges, only a near-universal acceptance of the moral depravity of the status quo can get the job done.
What seems unnecessarily provocative for those right of far left seems essential to the far left. Is that conflict actually also part of the necessary solution, or does it stand in the way of progress? As we have so little time to design and implement a climate change survival program, I also wonder if any resolution will likely be much too late.

The Wall and a Memory

When Trump talks about the Wall, it reminds me of a radio show in which a physicist and the famed 1934 MVP curve ball pitcher, Dizzy Dean, were being interviewed.

The physicist -- who had either failed to examine a baseball and notice that it had raised threads or was just a rather bad scientist -- argued, using a smooth cue ball as his model, that curve balls were not real, but an illusion. That without imparting new forces on a ball in flight, it could not be made to curve. (The actual physics is more complicated, but a baseball can curve because the rotational forces of the ball have discretely different impacts as the ball slows; the friction of the raised threads in the atmosphere creates changed forces on the flight of the ball as it slows. An easy way to think about it is that once the ball's velocity drops below a threshold level, the threads "catch" the air and steer the ball in a new direction.)

But no one on that radio show was giving any lectures about irregular surfaces, rotational forces, and threshold levels. Instead, Dizzy Dean proposed a simple experiment:

"Put the professor behind a tree and I'll bean 'em."

Build a mile long stretch of wall somewhere and hold a contest to see if people can get under or over it with equipment they can carry there for, say, 10 miles. Once you find a model that cannot be transgressed, you can begin to do the environmental impact, societal, legal (eminent domain), respectful (e.g., avoid Navaho sacred sites), and other (e,g., discussion of international relations, xenophobia, and immigration broadly) tasks that must be done before you turn it into a $20-50B project (as $5.7B is according to all experts, a lie, intending massive overruns).

Note that this is the first and last time I will ever compare Trump to a physicist. H's not even as smart as Dizzy Dean -- who, it may be noted, dropped out of school in the 3rd grade, and was famous for saying on air: "The Good Lord was good to me. He gave me a strong right arm, a good body, and a weak mind."

This game of Chicken should never have happened

In my view, moral Republicans and far-sighted, strategic Democrats should both think this government shutdown likely to fail their interests.

Moral Republicans -- let's define a moral Republican as one who supports Trump in the belief that he cares about US security, believes he is not a sociopath, and believes further that he is not arrested in his development and having a temper tantrum. As well, but not essential to my argument, you are moral because you believe Trump is doing more good than harm. Finally, also not essential to my argument, this is not really a tenable position if you are fully informed -- so I am willing to consider people moral who have allowed themselves to be incompletely informed.

If you are a moral Republican, then, you believe that Trump DOES care about the one million furloughed workers, does care about the devastation of parks, waterways, and other vulnerable environmental hot spots, does care about all the critical work that is not being done by the government, some of which may cause us grave harm, does find himself sleepless, worrying that even his secret service agents are unpaid throughout this shutdown, does care about the eroding of the credit of the US and the US dollar, does worry that that credit is diminished so badly that we lose the reserve currency status and hundreds of billions of dollars on his watch, and worries about his legacy as the president who destroyed the very enterprise he was elected to protect. (Again, if you are a moral Republican you do not believe he is an agent of Putin.)

Hence, if you are a moral Republican, you think Trump may cave in on this border wall -- after doing so much harm with the shutdown -- because he is too moral himself to allow so much devastation on his watch. That is negative political fallout with the vast majority, who care more for winning and losing political points than in doing good for the nation. And a braggart who says he can negotiate cannot afford to lose this battle.

How about strategic Democrats? Those who can play chess a few moves in advance? Virtually all Democrats think Trump is a sociopath who doesn't gave a damn about national security or the people, infrastructure, or institutions that will be harmed by a shutdown. Virtually all Democrats believe his psychological development was arrested very young, and that this is all a temper tantrum. And most Democrats agree that he is a braggart who bet it all on his ability to win a negotiation. So what about the strategic Democrats who are counting this out? Why would they think that a sociopath who doesn't give a damn about anything but his thin-skinned pride is going to be the first to swerve in this game of Chicken? He is driving the car remotely -- the occupants at risk are millions of Americans. Why would the people who think he's an uncaring SOB who cares nothing for American well-being and cares nothing for its people think he is the one who will blink?

Moral Republicans -- again, those who think he is a good man -- and strategic Democrats -- again, those who think he is a childish, sociopath -- should have balked at this foolish game of Chicken. Moral Republicans should believe a moral president would never do his country so much harm and strategic Democrats should believe that a infantile sociopath would never care enough to swerve first.

That each side should have thought this A FOOLISH GAME TO PLAY suggests it should not have happened.

But it did.

The only conclusion, then, is that moral Republicans have far too little influence on Trump and on the GOP leadership, and strategic Democrats have far too little influence on Democratic leadership.

So who *is* in charge?

On the GOP side, immoral, punitive, hate-mongerers who care little for the monumental human and other damage this will do. Unlike the moral Republicans, they know that Trump is a bastard -- and that suits them. They know he won't swerve first and the US will be damaged horribly -- and that suits them, too. He's a racist -- the more the better. Traitors and haters of all sorts --- some of the Bannon ilk who want everything destroyed; some of the Miller ilk who are homicidal maniacs who would sooner see a hungry child tossed into a camp than fed a warm meal; some of the Trump-Kushner ilk who think taxes are for suckers and smart people laugh at those who serve their country. These people see that Trump doesn't give a damn, will never lose face to do the right thing, and want just that.

The bottom line here is that in order to support Trump's position on the shutdown, you have to actually believe and support all the evil the Democrats are saying about him. Plenty do, apparently.

On the Democratic side, people who suffered so badly under total kleptocratic control that re-taking the House was very emotional. They know the wall is a stupid, hateful, racist piece of symbolic crap, and they thought it should be stopped. They imagined that standing up to Trump here and now was a first step in winning the war. So they jumped the gun and said -- yes, here and now, take a stand on the wall. $5.7B isn't big in the scheme of things, and one more massive corrupt and foolish construction project would not be our end, but giving this liar what he wants is revolting. Yes, closing the camps and returning the children to their parents would have been a much better battle for the moral high ground, but the wall has Trump's ugly face written all over it, so this is how to strike him closest to home.

But the Democrats with influence forgot to ask: when do you play a game of Chicken? Is this the game at which you beat THIS MAN? If I have a chance to play chess, checkers, poker, or Chicken with an SOB known for his stubborn rage, where do I put down my chips? We picked a game where the winner is the one who is best at not giving a damn, and being stubborn past the point of all reason. This is the one game Trump can win. And even if he loses, the costs of taking this hill will be very high.

The bottom line here is that in order to support Pelosi's view that Trump can be defeated on this hill and that it will not be a Pyrrhic victory, one has to believe much of what the Republican's have said about Trump -- that he is sane, cares about the country and its people, and can be reached by the mounting suffering of a shutdown. While I know many Republicans know Trump is a sociopath and like him for it, I am surprised that so many Democrats believe him or the GOP leadership decent enough to lose a game of Chicken before the suffering becomes unbearable for all moral people.

Democratic leadership wanted to beat Trump on the Wall so badly that they failed to carefully assess if this was the right battle. Whoever wins this battle must prove to be the bigger bastard in the game. And if they win? That's like coming home from work to discover that your kid was picked on at school and took out half a dozen kids with a lead pipe. You never look at your little one quite the same way again. To win this battle, you need to prove yourself to be the more callous sociopath. A monkey could have beaten Trump at chess, but this played to his strength and it only happened because the men around Trump know and love that he is a crazy, heartless bastard and the people around Pelosi, and perhaps Pelosi herself, needed someone to take a swing at Trump sooner rather than later, and jumped into the first battle without analyzing the game.