I have been following, as is surely obvious, the saga at the World Bank. For a closer , more informed, view click here, where they were kind enough to quote me. It would be fair to say that the contributors seem unenthused about Mr. Zoellick.
Why do some people resist science? Wednesday, May 30 2007
Economics and Politics 5:18 pm
Here is an interesting article, on a site called Edge that I got to from the excellent Arts & Letters Daily, that explores why some people find scientific ideas so difficult to accept. It is worth reading the entire article, but one conclusion is that on the whole scientists do not enjoy much of a position of authority in modern America. Consequently, when scientists pronouncements go counter to generally held, intuitive, but completely wrong ideas about the role of design in the origins of life, people tend not to give science much credence. The authors demonstrate that this extends to simple misperceptions about how objects move, a field that is subject to a level of objective proof.
An unwillingness to accept blatant appeals to authority sounds somewhat healthy, but this is a selective unwillingness. What puzzles me is that the authority of preachers and politicians seems able to trump that of scientists. This seems to be peculiar to this country and according to the authors, accounts for why the theory of evolution is accepted by only 40% of the adult population in the United States. Of 34 countries sampled only Turkey has a lower percentage.
I wonder has this always been the case. If this is a recent phenomenon, what caused it?
The Creation Museum – the implications for the rest of us Wednesday, May 30 2007
Economics and Politics 5:19 am
There has been much commentary about the Creation Museum, an institution which opened recently in southern Ohio, but little has been said about what this implies for economics, science, business and society at large.
At one level it is all somewhat encouraging. Clearly a determined person can get almost any enterprise off the ground in this country. Whether there will be a market for this is less certain, but if there is it is perhaps another small victory for private enterprise.
Less facetiously, the emergence of this museum and the degree of publicity it has received both nationally and internationally is worrying. The people who are responsible for this are trying to assume a mantle of scientific respectability, and this is bad for the rest of us, even if, as will surely be the case, their efforts will be entirely fruitless.
If one had any doubt about the desire by the creationist wing to put a scientific stamp on their beliefs, the Creation Museum should settle the question. Behind this costly effort is a desire for acceptance. Creationists don’t seem to want the recognition and respect of established scientists, on whom they regularly pour scorn. Instead, they seem to want acceptance from the public as representing legitimate scientific thought.
Before going any further I should first declare my colors: I am entirely sure that creationism is an essentially religious belief. The young earth variant of creationism as espoused by the founders of this museum is contradicted completely by a vast body of unconnected scientific evidence. No reasonable, well-educated and intelligent person doubts this, and no serious scientist gives literal creationism any credence whatsoever. So at one level, the whole thing is a bit of a joke. The museum will have no effect on accepted scientific ideas. The only people who will emerge convinced by this depiction of the origin of life will be those who know absolutely nothing about the accepted explanations – the scientific illiterates – or those who are familiar with those explanations but dismiss them on religious grounds, i.e. the zealots.
Nevertheless, what bothers me is the advance of the idea that what one believes is more important than what is actually the case. This entire venture is the diametric opposite of pragmatism, and pragmatism is what we need much more of if economies and societies are to progress. Given that a majority of people in this country believes that the fairy-story portrayed by the Creation Museum is broadly correct, the picture is quite bleak. When it comes to issues of what used to be called political economy, where is this majority going to side? Not with the facts and the data, you can be sure. This is a manifestation of a tendency to abandon real experience and objective data in favor of a system of belief, a system of economics, for example, as the believer wishes it to be, not as it is. This negates the credibility of the professional who has made a life study of a subject, whether that might be economics, geology, biology or genetics. In fact, I wonder why someone would really want to go into any demanding technical field if any new ideas that might be developed can be trumped by this faith-based, ideological way of looking at the world.
All good business people, all great economists and scientists and all effective politicians are pragmatists and empiricists. The world is the way it is, notwithstanding any theological mindset we bring to trying to understand it. If we want to affect any useful change we need to accept things as they are, not as we would like them to be. This is the defining characteristic of reasonable people.
Down the other way lies chaos, turmoil and ultimately a type of self-destructive individual and collective deceit that will drive civilization back, not forwards.
Bleak thoughts on Iraq for Memorial Day weekend Monday, May 28 2007
Politics 4:28 pm
Those of us who thought the Iraq war was going to be a disaster failed to persuade the majority. Those who believed that the war was going to be a success or at least that it was a good idea, now recognize they were unthinking or deceived. There aren’t many good feelings going round this Memorial Day weekend.
Even people who were against the war wanted it to go well, or at least for some good to come out of it. As we all gradually became aware that the adventure had transformed itself into a disaster, this single ambition shared by almost every American, that all the deaths should achieve something positive, seems now quite unrealistic.
I was struck how many cartoonists, who often accurately identify public preoccupations, reflected yesterday and today on the death toll.
People are now in one of three camps: those who want to quit Iraq now, those who want to quit later and a final diminishing element who feel that things will in some way turn around and we will secure peace and victory. Even the supporters of the “surge” are really proposing quitting later. I wonder if there are any genuinely informed people in the third opinion group; if so, perhaps they can persuade themselves that the war avoided something worse. Something worse is increasingly difficult to imagine. Public opinion will gradually coalesce – the two groups who support withdrawal will gradually coincide on when is a good time to leave Iraq and declare the war over. At that point public opinion will become decisive.
An article in the UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph, entitled Bush gets ready for Iraq U-turn by Brown predicts that the next prime minister of the UK, widely expected to be Gordon Brown, will announce a withdrawal of British troops within the first 100 days of taking office. This will be around the time that General Petreaus is expected to deliver his assessment of whether or not the surge has been effective. If the UK withdraws its troops and the increased US military engagement is not seen as definitively succeeding, the pressure on the Bush administration to start some form of disengagement will become impossible to withstand. Republican members of Congress have already indicated that their support cannot be taken for granted beyond the summer.
What will happen after a withdrawal is not entirely clear. Central government authority in its present form cannot survive, so the country will either fracture following a period of ethic cleansing or a strongman will emerge, most likely from the Shi’ite community. It is not impossible to imagine an Iraq that is hostile, nuclear-armed and subject to Iran. That such a comprehensive catastrophe faces us, brought about at the expense of so many lives, makes for a very sobering Memorial Day weekend.
Bill Frist as World Bank President – another disastrous idea Saturday, May 26 2007
Politics 12:25 pm
I read in the NY Times that Bill Frist, the former Senate Majority Leader, is apparently being considered as the next World Bank President to replace Paul Wolfowitz. This sounds like a false trail, at least I hope so. Frist has shown on at least one occasion that he is perfectly willing to suspend rational thought and ignore evidence in order to advance his political priorities. For example, I find it hard to believe that Frist would be neutral on sensitive development issues such as family planning. Equally importantly, Frist has no experience managing an organization like the Bank. He would be regarded exactly as Wolfowitz’s was: a politically-motivated appointment with no expertise or background in development or a track record in any comparable position.
The Last Word on Wolfowitz Monday, May 21 2007
Corporate Life and Politics 6:41 pm
The Economist, in an excellent article, An Outsider’s Fate, on the dismissal of Wolfowitz, reiterates the point that many people seem forget, that the real reason that Wolfowitz failed was that he was ineffective at his job. Commenting on the president’s attempts to change the culture of the bank:
“…a president cannot change those rhythms and routines until he has first mastered them”.
I go back to my posting, An open letter…. which attracted a fair amount of interest. It’s never about what it’s about… Christopher Hitchens, who wrote an article on Slate Sliming Wolfowitz, seems not to understand this.
Wolfowitz gives in… Friday, May 18 2007
Corporate Life and Politics 3:45 pm
When the inevitable resignation deal arrived yesterday my first thought was why one earth he took so long to acknowledge the inevitable. Clearly there was a great deal of pride involved in this supposed face-saving exercise, but there is also a degree of detachment from reality and contempt for the organization he was appointed to lead. Wolfowitz’s protracted departure aggravated the damage to the World Bank but it did give everyone a chance to observe the breathtaking arrogance of the position he was taking. He seemed to believe both that there was nothing wrong with the action he took to secure his companion’s pay deal, and that the revelation of the incident would do not harm to his ability to lead the bank. This illustrates limited ability to understand how his actions affect the people he was appointed to lead.
An interesting question is who will get the job now. By dumping Wolfowitz, with somewhat indecent haste, The White House has presumably retained the US privilege of selecting the WB head. I wonder will Bush see the opportunity as another chance to reward a loyalist. Here is a thought…maybe it would solve the Gonzales problem. Now, that is scary…
The death-throes of Wolfowitz Tuesday, May 15 2007
Politics 5:49 pm
It would appear from recent comments by the White House that the administration is bowing to reality and will gradually ease Paul Wolfowitz out of the World Bank. If not, they will acquiesce to this being done by others.
A good article on Spiegel Online argues that the very attributes that brought Wolfowitz to this pass at the Bank – cronyism, an unwillingness to listen to opposing views, arrogance and a sense of entitlement – were the very factors that drove him and the country to disaster over Iraq. Although clearly partisan, the article is quite convincing.
David Brooks on Paul Wolfowitz Thursday, May 3 2007
Corporate Life and Politics 5:15 pm
David Brooks has an interesting piece in the NYT today Wolfowitz’s Big Mistake (unfortunately part of the subscription Times Select section ). He points out that the fracas at the World Bank surrounding Paul Wolfowitz’s salary arrangements for his companion may not really be the issue, although not altogether a side-show given Wolfowitz’s public position on clean governance and transparency. According to Brooks, referring to the World Bank staff:
“Wolfowitz had an opportunity to be their champion, but he forfeited that opportunity by being aloof. …he entered a treacherous swirl of political, institutional and personal currents and navigated them poorly. Having failed to woo the open-minded people at the bank, it was inevitable they’d be out to get him.”
Sometimes Brooks can be a little difficult to take, particularly because of his constant “Republicans are victims, because Democrats are against us and they are in every position of influence in this country” line. That theme appears here as well, but he is also making a similar point to the one I attempted to make yesterday.
Obtaining buy-in as a leader is a difficult concept for people with a purely political background to grasp, although Wolfowitz spent eight years in academia, so he should have some idea. Unlike political appointees, people in most organizations cannot easily be fired, and unlike people in the military cannot easily be compelled along a course of action they are fundamentally opposed to.
Wolfowitz is finding out the hard way that in most structures the authority you hold over people is limited to what they want to give you.
Gun violence Sunday, Apr 29 2007
Politics 1:42 pm
To me it seems that we haven’t really had an honest debate about gun ownership in this country. One side points to the high level of gun violence and to examples in other countries which support the idea that a reduction in the ownership of certain weapons, and in particular making it harder to buy a gun, would go some way to reducing the frequency and severity of mass killings we saw recently in Virginia Tech. However, in this group there is a sub-group of unknown size that is opposed to anyone owning a handgun and wants to move towards prohibition. On the other side is a group that points fervently to the Second Amendment (always capitalized), treating it as only slightly less fundamental than the tablets carved by Moses. (Having Charlton Heston as President of the NRA conflates the Moses linkage further, presumably deliberately). Behind this is the unspoken acceptance that this kind of atrocity will occur from time to time, and is simply the price one has to pay for having the right to own a handgun, a right available to any wishing to take advantage of it. Since these events cannot be avoided any restriction is simply a concession to the step-by-step prohibitionist in the opposite camp, a group determined to ban all guns.
I am sure that each camp feels that the other is being intellectually dishonest, but also considers that their own basic message is too unpalatable to be used in public, permitting a certain level of disingenuousness.
Certainly the toll on the public from general gun ownership is not comparable, say, to the burden in lives and injuries from private ownership of automobiles. Society has never considered banning car ownership on the grounds that people get killed in significant numbers every year, although perhaps a significant difference is that murder by vehicle is relatively rare compared to death by accident.
There is a general precept that some burdens exist in society and are frequently worth the associated benefit. The problem with gun ownership is that the “benefit” of owning a handgun, whether psychological or practical accrues to the owner or purchaser, whereas the burden is borne by society in general. This is not true of automobile ownership. It is fairly clear that, despite what the NRA says, members of society do not themselves feel greatly comforted by other individuals carrying concealed handguns. The large number of establishments that ban concealed guns from their premises seems to support this. The NRA makes the implausible argument that if this freedom goes, all other freedoms will follow. The Association could make the argument that we cannot always expect the costs and the benefits to be borne by the same segment of society. Some people want to become private pilots, resulting in a certain risk that some small planes will fall out of the sky onto uninvolved passersby. Some people want to be able to have abortions, despite the fact that this is morally repugnant to other members of society. The proportions vary but typically costs and benefits don’t go hand-in-hand. When it comes to broad rights and privileges the payer and the player are often not the same person. The idea that this should be so – the costs and benefits should absolutely impact the same group of people – is a dangerous principle to adopt wholesale, although that doesn’t imply that society cannot adjust the way these costs and benefits play out via reasonable regulation of the activities under discussion. For that reason I think banning automatic and semi-automatic weapons, particularly handguns, while preserving the right of people to buy almost any other firearm, makes sense.
Unfortunately for the sake of progress on this and similar debates, neither party in the gun-control discussion will acknowledge the force of this argument. Each side would probably see it as too risky to advocate, sticking instead to a scorched-earth position that leads nowhere.
