How important exactly is science to the economy?

When US senator Marco Rubio failed to acknowledge that the Earth was billions of years old during an interview for GQ magazine, scientifically literate folks pounced. Astronomer and science writer Phil Plait took particular umbrage at Senator Rubio’s dismissive statement that the age of the Earth “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.” In a Slate article, Plait retorts (emphasis his):

Perhaps Senator Rubio is unaware that science—and its sisters engineering and technology—are actually the very foundation of our country’s economy? All of our industry, all of our technology, everything that keeps our country functioning at all can be traced back to scientific research and a scientific understanding of the Universe.

Cell phones, computers, cars, machinery, medicine, the Internet, manufacturing, communication, agriculture, transportation, on and on … all of these industries rely on science to work. Without basic research none of these would exist.

And all of science points to the age of the Earth being much, much older than Senator Rubio intimates. Astronomy, biology, relativity, chemistry, physics, anatomy, sociology, linguistics, cosmology, anthropology, evolutionary science, and especially radiometric dating of rocks all indicate the Universe, and our home planet Earth, are far older than any claims of a few thousand years. The overwhelming consensus is that the Earth is billions of years old. And all of these sciences are the basis of the technology that is our country’s life blood.

Writing for the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman also criticised Senator Rubio’s view that geological knowledge is unconnected to economic strength:

Coming back to the age of the earth: Does it matter? No, says Mr. Rubio, pronouncing it “a dispute amongst theologians”—what about the geologists?—that “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.” But he couldn’t be more wrong.

We are, after all, living in an era when science plays a crucial economic role. How are we going to search effectively for natural resources if schools trying to teach modern geology must give equal time to claims that the world is only 6000 years old? How are we going to stay competitive in biotechnology if biology classes avoid any material that might offend creationists?

So far, I’m with Plait and Krugman. After all, isn’t it obvious that scientific literacy is essential for a technology-based economy to flourish? Not necessarily so, according to Slate writer Daniel Engber. Responding to Phil Plait’s article, Engber challenges the view that a country’s economy depends on an absolute knowledge of science. He writes:

What about Rubio’s assertion that the age of the Earth “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States”? That’s the claim that gave Phil Plait “a chill,” since science is “the very foundation of our country's economy.” At Forbes, Alex Knapp declares that “this economy, at its root, is built on a web of scientific knowledge from physics to chemistry to biology. It’s impossible to just cherry pick out parts we don’t like.” If we get it wrong on Earth’s creation, these critics say, the United States will fall apart.

Will it really? It seems to me that Rubio is right. Lots of basic scientific questions have no bearing whatsoever on the nation's short-term economic growth. We can even go much further: Lots of scientific questions don’t matter all that much when it comes to other scientific questions. It’s possible—and quite common—for scientists to plug away at research projects without explicit knowledge of what’s happening in other fields. And when a bedrock principle of science does need to be adjusted—a not-so-unusual occurrence, it turns out—the edifice of scholarship doesn’t crumble into dust. DVD players still operate. Nuclear plants don't shut down.

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci agrees with Engber. On his blog Rationally Speaking, Pigliucci explains why people like Phil Plait and Paul Krugman (and Pigliucci himself, initially) are wrong to believe that the kind of ignorance of (or disrespect for) science displayed by Senator Rubio is ipso facto damaging to science, or the economy, as a whole:

There is a deeper philosophical reason why Engber is right and people like Phil and myself ought to be more cautious with our outrage at the cutting of scientific budgets or at politicians’ opportunistic uttering of scientific nonsense to gather supporters and votes. Knowledge in general, and scientific knowledge in particular, is not like an edifice with foundations — a common but misleading metaphor. If it were, it would be more likely that, as Phil so strongly stated, everything is connected to everything else, so that ignoring, denying, or replacing one piece of the building will likely create fractures all over the place.

But that’s not how it works. Rather, to use philosopher W.V.O. Quine’s apt metaphor, knowledge is more like a web, with some threads being stronger or more interconnected than others. […] If you see science as a web of statements, observations, experiments, and theories, then it becomes perfectly clear why Engber is right at pointing out that quite a bit of independence exists between different parts of the web, and how even relatively major chunks of said web can be demolished and replaced without the whole thing crumbling. There really is next to no connection between someone’s opinions about the age of the earth and that person’s grasp of the state and causes of a country’s economy.

Pigliucci’s use of the ‘science is a web’ metaphor is persuasive. But before you think that he is letting anti-scientific folks like Senator Rubio, creationists and ‘alternative’ medicine advocates off the hook, Pigliucci clarifies his position on the value of science and evidence-based reasoning (emphasis his):

Still, there is an important point where Phil is absolutely correct and that I think Engber underestimates. What is “chilling” and disturbing about people like Rubio (but not people like Obama) is that they have embraced a general philosophy of rejecting evidence and reason whenever it is ideologically or politically convenient. That is what is highly dangerous.

I can see Pigliucci’s point about how science isn’t a monolithic edifice that will collapse when its foundations are cracked by ignorance and rejection of facts. I accept his argument that science is actually a web, where torn or missing threads in one part may not affect the structural integrity of the whole, or other parts of the web. Still, as Pigliucci concedes, this does not excuse anti-scientific attitudes. A country’s economic prosperity may not be entirely dependent on the scientific literacy of its leaders, but a culture that enables, even encourages, ignorance and rejection of knowledge surely isn’t a healthy one.

1.12.12

The end of print?

Sam Harris’s latest blog post spells out in brow-furrowing, lip-chewing detail the gloomy future of the printed book. Fellow bibliophiles are going to find it a depressing read. I do.

Martin at Furious Purpose has commented on the rather dire Melbourne bookshop scene. Borders and Angus & Robertson are gone. My regular supplier of ink-on-dead-trees, Reader’s Feast, is now a famine – they shut shop a few months ago. The only bookstore left that is likely to stock the kind of books I’m willing to pay grossly inflated prices for (thanks Australian government! /sarcasm) is Readings in Carlton. If (when?) that place shutters, I’m going to need therapy.

In this digital, Amazonian age we currently inhabit, book lovers need to somehow make the printed word indispensable, hip even. John Waters has an idea on how to do just that.

HT: Martin




28.9.11

Fukuyama’s new book

I’ve just started reading Francis Fukuyama’s latest book The Origins of Political Order. It’s the first of two volumes, and deals with the development of political institutions across varying cultures and eras from prehistoric times to the 18th century (the second volume will pick up where the first left off and continue the analysis up to the present time). Some have called it Fukuyama’s magnum opus. The books are certainly ambitious in both scope and intended theoretical application.

Fukuyama is often associated with American neoconservatism, but apparently he no longer supports that rather bellicose ideology. A passage from chapter one of TOoPO (‘The Necessity of Politics’) shows his more centrist stance:

There is in fact a curious blindness to the importance of political institutions that has affected many people over the years, people who dream about a world in which we will somehow transcend politics. This particular fantasy is not the special province of either the Left or the Right; both have had their versions of it.

And the political scientist who signed a post-9/11 letter to President Bush urging him to remove Saddam Hussein from power by any means necessary later became a critic of the Iraq War. In TOoPO Fukuyama writes:

The degree to which people in developed countries take political institutions for granted was very much evident in the way the United States planned, or failed to plan, for the aftermath of its 2003 invasion of Iraq. The U.S. administration seemed to think that democracy and a market economy were default conditions to which the country would automatically revert once Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was removed, and seemed genuinely surprised when the Iraqi state itself collapsed in an orgy of looting and civil conflict.

Fukuyama’s centrist, perhaps even realist, ideas appeal to me. As someone who flirted with far Leftism many years ago (I was a member of an Australian socialist group), my present self actually feels a tad embarrassed over having been seduced by romantic ideas that often took leave of the realities of society, human nature and economics. I think my acquired respect for rationality, evidence and critical thinking played a big part in my move towards the political centre (though upon a thorough accounting perhaps more of my values lie towards the liberal, progressive left). Maybe it’s an inevitable transition, as per Winston Churchill’s curt remark:

If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.

Since I’m neither twenty nor forty, it’s only fitting that I be a moderate, thus retaining both heart and brain. Which is why I also liked Joseph Heath’s Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism (2009), where a left-leaning philosophy professor debunks common economic myths believed by the Left and the Right. This sort of equal opportunity reality check isn’t so much a case of “the truth lies somewhere in the middle” (an argument prone to the false compromise fallacy), but rather a case of the facts being indifferent to ideology. Just like in science.

It’s going to take me a while to get through volume one of The Origins of Political Order, especially since my distraction by other reading material is basically guaranteed. Hopefully by the time I reach the cliffhanger chapter on the French Revolution, volume two will already be out. I swear, Fukuyama better not do a George R R Martin.




15.7.11

When Darwin meets Smith

The Great Recession has discredited the once-irreproachable efficient-markets hypothesis (EMH). It turns out after all that markets do not present all available information, that investors and consumers are not always rational agents, and that prices fluctuate with alarming frequency and wide variation. In the ‘Issues 2010’ special edition of Newsweek, Barrett Sheridan ('Markets are like people') reports on a proposed alternative to the EMH; the adaptive-markets hypothesis (AMH). This idea’s foremost proponent is MIT economist Andrew Lo, who has set out to repair the now-obvious flaws of the EMH using the findings of behavioural economics. More specifically, Lo wants to introduce Adam Smith to Charles Darwin.

Commercialism

The damning thing about commercialism is that its proxies - media editors, critics, bankers, brokers, culture gatekeepers, CEOs, shareholders, advertisers, retailers, consumers - all conspire to squeeze you tighter and tighter in a vice of 'economic interests' until your integrity spurts out your arse. It's the spiritual equivalent of dumping toxic waste into a virgin river, then bottling the foul water and charging you five bucks for the pleasure of drinking it.

The folly of 'future value'

In Issue 6 (November 08) of Standpoint magazine, the 'Dialogue' section featured a discussion between Samuel Brittan and Edward Hadas on the topic 'Is capitalism morally bankrupt?' Regarding the financial system's questionable viability, Brittan remarked that it was 'when people are acquiring objects... for their resale value that the system gets rather wonky', creating 'asset bubbles'. This tendency for people to buy things for their future value rather than for their present 'use value' manifests itself in actions like purchasing investment homes, not to live in, but in the hope of the building's value appreciating over time for a profitable resale. All sorts of financial speculation is essentially future-oriented rather than focused on the present pleasures to be had from products and assets.

Investments, speculation, financial forecasts; these spheres of economic activity emphasize the gaining of greater wealth over the actual enjoyment of products or experiences. The dominant mentality is that of a gambler, rather than an aesthete. No need to recommend the ascetic life as the moral ideal. There's nothing reprehensible in wanting and appreciating things. And it is in acquiring things that money shows its utility. But to chase more of it at the expense of delighting in the very stuff that it has delivered is a sad and vulgar exercise.

Brittan has placed a finger on one contributor to the global financial crisis. The complex economics that underpins his observations escapes me, but I agree with Richard Todd, who in his book The Thing Itself: On the Search for Authenticity, declared that 'We need to be better materialists.' I interpret Todd's opinion as a call for us to reassess our material priorities, for we all have material priorities, even the most austere world-renouncers amongst us (it's only a matter of degree). Better that we love and respect things for their 'use value' now, and not merely for their economic value later.




9.1.09

Pragmatism and particularism

Pragmatism and particularism are complementary philosophies, close cousins if not actual siblings. Pragmatism’s focus on what works transcends the vain rivalry between different, usually opposing, creeds, whether in politics, economics or ethics. Pragmatic choices are made in the context of the particular circumstances calling for action. Point-scoring and petty games of one-upmanship are rejected as irrelevant, frivolous even, in the pursuit of tangible goals. Truth ceases to be an empty abstraction that changes chameleon-like to suit the ideological surroundings; it becomes a non-negotiable value that is only as good as the delivered results.

Liberty Ltd, unlimited

Consumerist capitalism and its reliance on markets and markets alone to promote freedom, specifically the consumer’s freedom of choice, ignores certain hard truths about human nature. Libertarian economic philosophy makes grand - and erroneous - assumptions regarding the behaviour of individuals pursuing their rational self-interests; that base emotions like greed and callousness don’t exist (or worse, are trumpeted as good), that private choices don’t have public consequences, that human values are simply the aggregate of personal wants and desires removed from a wider social context. We are free to choose from five-hundred-and-seventy-three brands of washing detergent but are blocked from buying television air-time for civic messages criticizing consumerism. The contradictory message is clear: we are free to spend our money as we see fit, so long as we spend it as consumerist capitalism sees fit. We can subscribe to any social ideology we want to, so long as it's consumerism.

Capitalism: a convenient scapegoat

In his book Supercapitalism, a critique on the adverse effects of turbo-charged capitalism in tandem with a weakened democracy, economist Robert Reich writes:

Capitalism's role is to enlarge the economic pie. How the slices are divided and whether they are applied to private goods like personal computers or public goods like clean air is up to society to decide. This is the role we assign to democracy.

This is in response to the common accusation of capitalism being the fountainhead of all sorts of social and environmental ills, from widening inequalities of income and wealth to greater job insecurity to climate change. This simplistic view is inaccurate and lays far too many sins at the feet of what is essentially a neutral tool of material and social progress.