Geeks In the Public Forum? 326
cedarhillbilly writes "In his new book The Geek Manifesto, Mark Henderson 'pleads for citizens who value science to force it onto the mainstream political agenda and other main walks of life.' There are some important questions that need answers: 'Do you have to give up your tech practice to undertake a public role?' Also, 'Is political life (compromise, working by consensus, irrationality) antithetical to the "geek" values?'"
The Guardian's coverage sums up the idea nicely: "What I desperately want is a move toward an evidence-based culture in politics. Politicians are free to say: 'I think people on drugs should be punished because drugs are immoral.' That's a moral call, albeit a rather stupid one in my opinion. What they shouldn't do is say: 'I want to reduce drug use, and sending all users to prison is the most cost-effective way to achieve that.' That's not a moral call, it's a factual statement; as such it should be evidence-based, or else the person making it should shut the hell up."
No chance in hell (Score:2, Insightful)
The same skills that get your laid also get you elected...
That's Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Politicians say things that they think will cause us to vote for them. When they say stupid shit, the fault isn't so much in the limited realm of "politics" but rather the much wider realm of all of us. Do most people argue in terms of evidence? You're not going to make politics become evidence-based, until you can answer that last question with a confident Yes.
Re:Technocrats (Score:4, Insightful)
And the environmentalists want environmentalists running the system, the banks want financial people running the system, large corporations want businessmen running they system, and so on and so on. Yea, we all wish that politicians had our point of view, but it's not realistic. To get elected, you need to be able to convince more than half the population that you would properly represent them. If you're too focused in one area, then you'll have a real hard time getting support from people not in that area.
What an elitist (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, Mark Henderson wants Technocrats not Politicians running our system. I tend to agree.
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
Isaac Asimov
Federalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Theoretically, this is one of the arguments in favor of Federalism. Local communities can beta-test new ideas before they go into general deployment.
Doesn't always quite work that way, but that's the idea.
Speaking of the war on drugs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Out-of-country operations are just a cover for counter-insurgency, or for clearing land in Columbia and driving out peasants so multi-national corporations can come in for mining, and resource-extraction, and agribusiness, and macra production, and so on. Which is why you have (outside of Afghanistan) probably the largest refugee population in the world in Columbia. The War on Drugs is not effecting drug production. In fact, it's going up.. But it's going to continue because that wasn't the purpose.
Here in the United States, the drug war has been associated, clearly, with a very sharp rise in incarceration. If you go back to 1980, the prison population in the United States, per capita, was approximately like other industrial countries -- kind of toward the high end, but not off the chart. Now, it's five to ten times as high and still going up. And most of it is drug related (also, length of sentences, and repeated sentences, and so on.)
And it mostly targets what are called the "dangerous classes," the poor, minorities, and so on. So like, black males, is astronomical. On the other hand, drug use among wealthy people is barely prosecuted. So it's a class-based form of control of superfluous population, and for that purpose, it seems to be working.
It's also making a lot of money for commercial enterprises. What some criminologists call the prison-industrial complex has been a pretty substantial development, especially for rural counties, it's a Godsend. When they build prisons, it brings in construction work, jobs, and surveillance. A couple of years ago, maybe still, the fastest growing white-collar profession was security officer, and it gets rid of people you don't want anything to do with. They don't have a place in the current industrial system. And there's also racial elements involved. So you can say the drug war is a success for what its real purpose is, but not for its proclaimed purposes. -Noam Chomsky
duh, politics has always been political (Score:4, Insightful)
the US Constitution was a result of months of bitter argument and bickering. same with politics in almost every democracy on earth. except that you will normally have a party win 40% or so of the vote and they will have to make a coalition with lots of smaller parties and make political deals as a process
this is called life. the US has 300 million people. say almost 200 million adults who can vote. almost everyone will have different opinions on every subject based on their home location, upbringing, etc.
to pass laws that affect different people you have to make political deals
this childish star trek fantasy of an all wise council making the right decision is just a fantasy. there is no right decision for most people
For y(x) = -1/x, What is Your Policy at Zero? (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, Mark Henderson wants Technocrats not Politicians running our system. I tend to agree.
I haven't read this book and I think the article discussing it doesn't accomplish much aside from briefly agreeing with the author on everything. I think this whole argument is sort of a nonstarter. Oftentimes I try to look at "soft" issues as an ethical engineer and I come to the conclusion that you can approach a lot of hotly debated issues from two sides. And, like the limit as x approaches zero in y(x) = -1/x [wolframalpha.com], you can sort of logically come to two extremely different conclusions. As an oversimplified example, take anti-trust laws. From the left we start with something really innocuous like it's the government's job to protect an individual's basic rights which means that if they wish to enter a market then other individuals shouldn't be able to collude to keep them out of that market by price fixing which means that we should have government regulations against it ... and we're at positive infinity. But if you approach from the right you start with something really innocuous as well like governments should enable individuals to follow their dreams and if their dreams are price fixing so be it because the free market will decide whose product is better and the consumer will be smart enough to buy the new product if it is indeed made better and the price fixing will result in a loss to the colluding parties and so therefore we need to make the free market freer and truly free to alleviate all these issues ... and we're at negative infinity. Both sides are clamoring for one extreme and the engineer is just sitting there saying "Technically it's undefined."
Basically, two strong narratives will ruin an ethical engineer's best intents.
Another topic that I'm not sure how it is addressed is that you only get one experiment. There is no control group for your political policies. On top of that a negative stigma has been attached to people being used as lab rats so don't even try to divide your populace into statistical experiments -- they have to do that themselves. If an engineer does not have absolute control over an environment, he or she usually considers the experiment flawed and the resulting data potentially worthless. This is one of the defining hallmarks of our political process -- no one person controls all of the variables.
I'm left wondering why any ethical engineer would desire to be a technocrat.
I am 100% behind pushing science in the public forum and seeking more data and more models. I will argue, however, that the first decision an engineer makes in office will likely be as emotionally, personally and financially motivated as it would had Governor Evil been there instead.
Re:Religion First (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that we'd be better off without "religous types" such as Pat Robertson and Rick Santorum, I'd like to remind you that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi were also "religious types."
Re:Technocrats (Score:4, Insightful)
Will that ever work? Doubtful. Is it becoming more likely in the US? Hell no. But it is more complicated than "I want politicians who think like me," and it's disingenuous to paint this that way. We would be much better off if we didn't have the witch hunts, security theater, censorship, racism, and all other unfortunate little problems caused by people thinking with their crotch and not their head.
Re:For y(x) = -1/x, What is Your Policy at Zero? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Jefferson summed-up your thoughts eloquently: "If it were possible we would have no government. It is only to protect our rights that we resort to government at all."
In other words the ideal would be no government or regulation at all (anarchist), but since that's impractical, we create a minimal government to protect basic rights like not being harmed by others (libertarian). BTW I side with the free market viewpoint, since I don't see why there's need for government to regulate products, except to make sure factories don't abuse their workers, or abuse the water supply via dumping chemicals.
Oftentimes monopolies arise, not through the free market, but via government order: Such as granting Comcast a monopoly in my neighborhood, or DeBeers a monopoly over diamonds, or the Central Bank over interest rates for loans (price-fixing). Those orders should be revoked, and the free market allowed to operate.
Gotta kill Bulverism first (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Technocrats (Score:4, Insightful)
Put another way, it isn't "I want politicians who think like me", it's "I want politicians who think". The idea is, in my mind at least, that any proposed course of action should have evidence, or at least a verifiable theory, to back it up. And, almost more importantly, results should be reviewed and fed back into the system, something that seems sorely lacking in today's political climate. A technocracy or meritocracy can have division over what is the correct course of action, just like you can have two software engineers who are both experts in their field disagree about the best way to solve a problem. It isn't about finding the one true path forward, it's about evaluating the possible paths based on reality instead of ideology.
Re:What an elitist (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course we need agencies like OSHA to protect the workers, and the EPA to stop dumping of chemicals in waterways, and FTC to keep investment banks (gambling houses) separate from savings banks..... but we should try to keep these things as minimal as possible. When they start arresting people for choosing to drink natural milk, then they've gone too far and need to be downsized.
A technocrat in the real sense wouldn't ever do that, because there is no evidence that drinking natural milk is a law-enforcement problem. The only thing a real technocrat would be concerned about is that milk of any kind is labelled accurately so that customers know what they're buying. There'd be nothing for them to do unless misrepresentation/fraud were taking place.
Re:There is only one moral call (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There is only one moral call (Score:3, Insightful)
If there's no fundamental human right to healthcare, food, and shelter, then there's no fundamental human right to free speech, or association, or any of the those other negative rights
How do you figure that?
I can exercise my free speech without forcing you to do anything. I don't need to take your money (through government as a proxy). I don't need to force you to listen, though I can hope you will choose to. At no point does my free speech require that armed men (police) use threats of violence to force you to do anything.
That is the difference between an inalienable human right and an entitlement. If you believe they are the same, you could not be more misguided. Be careful, because there are a lot of monied interests that view both the Constitution and the entire notion of inalienable human rights as pesky obstacles to their goals. For that reason, these things (rights and entitlements) are often conflated deliberately in order to cause the very confusion you manifest. It is not done to strengthen the perceived value of entitlements, but to weaken the perceived value of rights.
I would go so far as to say it is plain evil.
Re:Religion First (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that we'd be better off without "religous types" such as Pat Robertson and Rick Santorum, I'd like to remind you that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi were also "religious types."
They understood the difference between having your personal faith and respecting that others have the right to do (or not do) the same, versus implementing a theocracy.
Gandhi had no problem with the teachings of Christ even though he was thoroughly Hindu. His only complaint about Christianity was that the Christians who practice it are not enough like the Christ they claim to follow.
I personally admire the teachings of Christ. I believe he was better and more advanced than myself, and therefore I should listen to him (as I do with anyone meeting that criteria). I believe that practicing his teachings makes me a better, more loving, more forgiving person. But I cannot stand the way it's paraded around like it's a political issue.
One's faith should be a personal thing. I am spiritual, but spirituality is not something I can give to another person. If they want it, they have to find it themselves in their own terms. If they don't want it, I respect that even though I don't personally agree. In either case, telling someone else how they should live goes against everything I believe in. Selling one's faith in exchange for votes makes that person a sort of whore and calls into question the sincerity of their faith.
Not only do I not care what religion a candidate practices, I don't even want to know. Candidates should be judged on whether they promote freedom and prosperity, not whether they're in the same denominational club as oneself.
Re:Technocrats (Score:4, Insightful)
sure but thats not the only issue. There is also the question of ideology. I think everyone would like to see 'technocrats' in power. The problem is that who counts as a technocrat does come back to ideology... the ideology of what government policies should even be trying to accomplish...because that is not a valueless question, or even a purely technical one.
Lets go back to "drug policy", since its my favorite...from the original post:
"I want to reduce drug use, and sending all users to prison is the most cost-effective way to achieve that."
Its an interesting example but, it rests on that first statement "I want to do X". Well how do we determine that X is a good thing, and something that the government should be doing? What is their goal? What is it that they are intend to do?
Is it the governments job to protect us from our own bad decisions? Is it their job to enable us to live in freedom as we choose, or is it to build an orderly society that gets things done. Is it more important to build forward or to garauntee liberty? When these come into conflict, ideology will deterime which evidence is important.
Even if you were to make a technocratic argument that liberty is the most efficient way to achieve the goals of an orderly society that gets things done, it still can't answer whether that should be the goal. The goal itself has to come from ideology.
Re:Technocrats (Score:3, Insightful)
More often than not, scientists falsify their results to get ahead.
Your statement asserts that more than half of scientific results are deliberately falsified. Bullshit.
There are, of course, a few who might deliberately falsify results, but they are a tiny minority. They are also always caught out in the end. Scientists know that the truth will always win for any testable hypothesis, and the idea of faking results is ludicrous.
It's depressing, albeit unsurprising, that you were modded "insightful". The article which was linked to in the slashdot story you linked to was concerned with medical and social pseudosciences (where innumeracy prevails, .05 seems to be a magical significance level, and results are blithely cherry-picked). If you had bothered to read that article, you might have noticed that real science was not impugned.