The fancy phrase “epistemic closure” may be a bad one, and not just because it may be too fancy by half, but when Julian Sanchez applied it to the great body of American conservatism, he touched a nerve. The claim that conservatives are caught in a kind of feedback loop of ideological closed-mindedness was discussed and debated in several high profile blogs – giving every blogger and many a commenter a chance to show off his or her own epistemological infirmities.
Karl at HotAir did a fine job establishing the lack of any empirical basis for judging conservatives unaware of alternative viewpoints and information, but there is and was something else going on here, something not directly susceptible to survey data and a mapping of linking habits and reading lists. It was the scientifically oriented Jim Manzi at NRO/The Corner who drove the discussion furthest, not by either attacking or supporting Sanchez, but by conducting a demonstration, almost in the manner of an experiment. After analyzing a chapter from Mark Levin’s Liberty & Tyranny on global warming, Manzi summed up his verdict with a word that’s easier to process than “epistemically closed,” but that one suspects he wishes he hadn’t used: “wingnuttery.”
You can see why Levin would feel sand-bagged. But he might just as well have felt complimented that someone still takes his 2009 bestseller seriously enough to analyze and respond to it, while anyone who’s listened to more than a few minutes of his radio show would need a heart of stone not to laugh at anyone’s hurt feelings on his behalf. Predictably, Levin’s response post is saturated with derision, just like his radio show, whose motto seems to be “That’s right! I said it!” Rather than further escalate, Manzi wisely stepped back without giving in, inviting readers to compare the two posts (Manzi’s, Levin’s) and reach their own conclusions.
Now, this all might seem like a pointless exercise – if fun in a kind of inside conservative baseball way – but such exchanges sometimes lead to unexpected places. Eventually involving an expanded cast of regular Corner-ites, the proceedings finally inspired Manzi to lay out the basis for a truly conservative response to global warming – one that begins with the intellectual humility that those committed to denial or alarm conspicuously lack. He eventually linked to an easy to miss post from earlier in the week that he self-deprecatingly referred to as “excruciating” in its detail. Its conclusion happens to offer a succinct formulation of a potential “grand strategy” on ecological crisis:
We can be confident that humanity will face many difficulties in the upcoming century, as it has in every century. We just don’t know which ones they will be. This implies that the correct grand strategy for meeting them is to maximize total technical capabilities in the context of a market-oriented economy that can integrate highly unstructured information, and, most importantly, to maintain a democratic political culture that can face facts and respond to threats as they develop.
In addition to being constructive and refreshingly “open,” this “grand strategy” offers the key benefit of resilience in the face of tomorrow’s headlines, next year’s hurricane season, the scientific measurements and re-measurements of the next decade, and the considered opinions of eminent men and women who are relatively invulnerable to charges of self-dealing and self-interest. It might even withstand the eventual resurgence of a global ecology movement that may appear today on the political defensive, but that still commands broad support, and may be revived much sooner and more powerfully than post-Climategate triumphalists on the far right want to believe.
A side-benefit of such a strategy might bear on some disturbing polling numbers that at least deserve a place in the great epistemological ruction of 2010. For instance:
That’s from a Pew Poll of last July. Or how about this less widely remarked synthesis of polling results, compiled by Charles Murray (a sometime contributor to the Corner), on ideological affinities among American population groups over time:
These numbers may also help explain the perceived vulnerability of the right to the charge of closed-mindedness. The only positive thing about the situation for conservatives is that it suggests a growth opportunity: Corrective movement back to near equality would be a tremendous accomplishment, and a major blow to the liberal coalition. Otherwise, a choice before the public that comes down to “the highly intelligent, well-educated, and well-informed” vs. “conservatives” might at best work for an election or two, but you can’t like the looks of it over the longer term.
There may be explanations for such results that go beyond the obvious. Many scientists and intellectuals may be reacting self-interestedly to their own dependency on state support, for instance, and, especially in the wake of Climategate, they face an urgent need to to confront this issue squarely. Yet it’s still sad to think that this sector of society, representing people whose commitments and ethos are in many ways as “conservative” as “liberal,” have been moving to the left for 40 years. Is it too much to wonder whether continual and habitual assaults on the honesty, intentions, patriotism, and professionalism of scientists and intellectuals, a reflexive readiness to dispute the validity and usefulness of scientific and intellectual inquiry, in short the open adoption of anti-scientific and anti-intellectual attitudes and practices by some conservatives may also have played a role in such dramatic and long-standing trends?
Conservative efforts to alter this situation – American society with its head twisted ever further around at its neck – might begin with the understanding that belief or disbelief in the greenhouse effect, global warming, and other properly scientific matters cannot be a political issue in a free society: Only how we go about addressing scientific questions can ever be. There may also be times when no decision is more important to any society than one requiring scientific input. At that point – at any moment, really – we may need skeptical but non-denialist scientists like Richard Lindzen, and people who can take them at their actual word like Jim Manzi, much more than many conservatives seem to believe – or, under conditions of ideological and emotional closed-mindedness, are capable of admitting or possibly even of conceiving.
And we’ll probably need excitable and entertaining, fiercely dedicated polemicists, too. That’s right. I said it.
@ strangelet:
Based on that rather pathetic but all too human college sex confessional thing – that I just looked up for the first time? I think you may be reading a tad bit much into it with the broken glass granny bit.
@ CK MacLeod:
IT Boggles the mind that you’ve not read it.
@ Barbara:
Oh, c’mon, Barbara. I like “immanentize the eschaton”! You can have so much fun with it. “Epistemic closure” promises plenty too.
Although I think I would say the biggest problem of the 21st century is the great yawning void between epistemologic closure among one set of folks, and the utterly unclosable epistemologic aperture characteristic of another.
@ narciso:
Hey, Zardoz is a cool cult classic. Y’all messin’ with all my cultural touchstones here. How often do you get to see Sean Connery nancing around in a foofy get-up like that?
Speaking of ridiculous fictional treatments of the Ice Age that was impending back in the 1970s, who else remembers Colleen McCullough’s A Creed for the Third Millennium? I think that was mid-80s. The cognoscenti in Alarmist Theory circles were already moving on to planetary meltdown, but the goodhearted Aussie lass, mega-selling author of Thorn Birds, took a game late-in-the-day whack at depicting an Ice Age falling on the northeastern US. I mainly remember the book as being full of colloquialisms Yanks don’t use.
I had forgotten all about that aspect of that book, actually quite nearly that book, she went on to the Rome series but then careened
of course since then
J.E. Dyer wrote:
That’s private.
I’d like to pose a question. Is “epistemic closure” anything more than a newfangled synonym for “narrow minded”? Is not accusing conservatives of epistemic closure equivalent to spicing up the tired chestnut that conservatives are old-fashioned fuddy-duddies unable to escape the past? This is not exactly an innovation in thinking so much as putting old wine into a new bottle. Conservatives, beginning, I believe, with Burke, have addressed the tendentious accusation a hundred-thousand times or so. As active verbs, there’s not a farthing’s worth of difference between “to narrow” and “to close.” “Epistemic” also seems to me to be no more than a tarted-up version of “mindful.” Dragging in a Greek root to replace a Germanic one may give an appearance of being an un-thought-of conjecture, while in fact owning little of substance that is new and exciting or even much worth pondering.
An alternative way of analogizing the matter might be that whereas invoking the spectre of epistemic closure pretends to be a tactical exercise in aid of improving Conservatism, it would be more accurate to characterize it as a strategic attack on Conservatism itself, a hackneyed polemical posture at that, which by stealth diverts the merits of any controversy into naked reconsideration of principle, to fruitless questioning of core conservative presuppositions, leaving, not incidentally, Liberalism’s openness to novelty, which an incorrigible ideologue such as yours truly views as little more than a deplorable taste for nihilism, blessedly undisturbed.
In sum, for us navel gazing, while for the opposition, given the parlous state of their present political prospects, the considerable comfort of watching conservatives battling a wacky auto-immune disorder. What a godsend to the Jonathan Chaits and Paul Krugmans of the the world.
That does seem to be the point of the game, Joe, that our esteemed host doesn’t get. When they are running a shell game, like with the
health care leviathan, cap n trade, this new ‘financial reform’ boondoggle and we’re impolite in pointing out that’s its a con. The
beautiful plumage of the Norwegian Blue, doesn’t obscure the fact
that it’s bleeding demised, ceased to be, But lo and behold to the ones who point out that the emperor does not indeed have a new set of clothes
@ J.E. Dyer:
Calls to mind a favorite Whittaker Chambers quote, in response to the bumpersticker wisdom of “Minds are like parachutes: they work best when open”. He said, “Yes, but even a parachute has to be closed at one end to really be functional.”
By the way, your thoughts on the Jim Jones Stand-up Routine (is he headed for the Catskills? “Oh, the food’s terrible and such small portions!”) were excellent. I understand that the joke doesn’t read as well as it was delivered. Fine, it was still truly tone deaf and very, very odd.
@ J.E. Dyer:
I thought Zardoz was an anti-anxiety drug.
OMG!OMG! Did you all hear that they’ve stopped production of the next James Bond movie until MGM gets sold???!!!! Daniel Craig is the proper heir to Sean Connery. I was so happy to see the back of Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton totally forgettable, Pierce Brosnan was OK, but Craig… oh, baby… but he probably is no better than some African imam running up bride futures by developing strange unregulated derivatives that are inherently exploitive of XX and foster the hegemony of the patriarchy.
In other words, my kind of guy.
They have to stop with the Byzantine scripts like “Quantum of Solace”
and some of the settings, Haiti, for the better part of an hour, the
Atacama desert, “Royale” had good pacing, but this one lagged for
long stretches. Don’t laugh, but that might very well be the next villain
narciso wrote:
Not merely “a con.” The same ol’ con.
well..I don’t think it is epistemic closure at all.
It is just bunker mentality and the age old exploitation of the proles by the elites.
Conservative elities don’t really believe the crapology the low-information base believes….they just pretend to believe to exploit them.
“Closed-minded” was already proposed several times as an adequate plain talk synonym. However, to say someone is closed-minded doesn’t tell you very much. Arguing, as strangelet does above, that the con elites merely pretend to be closed-minded in order to please the base, is a flexible and also not very revelatory charge – as if lib elites don’t do the same thing? As if anyone in daily life doesn’t withhold thoughts or feelings for the sake of not offending others, for whatever reasons, but in the end for reasons of self-interest?
I don’t know if Sanchez has gone into detail about his reasons for using the specific term, but I think he wanted to put a post-structuralist spin on his critique of conservative “discourse,” while keeping it somewhat grounded empirically in a description of the familiar conservative media complex. When he deploys the word “episteme,” he summons Foucault to testify from the grave as follows:
The context was the discussion of the history of science, as a history of scientific discourses rather than a history of progressive discoveries, which Foucault in other works extended to other realms.
Sanchez’s idea, apparently, was that conservatives more so than liberals – perhaps because driven into a “bunker” – are unable to process, even acknowledge the existence of certain kinds of evidence or argument. I would argue instead that to the extent anyone’s “discourse” can be characterized as ideological, it is “epistemically closed” (I was saying something like this just the other day without the “e” word). The Marxists were here first, at least with the terminology, though it goes without saying that to the beginning of time, all discourses are defined as much by what they exclude as by what they contain. This apparently goes for theories of mathematics and cybernetic systems, as well. It also happens to be a theme of “the Latest Freed Man,” a poem that gave great delight to a post-structuralist professor of mine back in the day.
To bring us back to the present topic, Levin and his partner in epistemic crime Andy McCarthy almost fall over themselves demonstrating their ideological closure. It is clear from word one, or nearly, that they would remain uninterested in global warming per se even up to the moment that the atmosphere itself exploded in flame. They have already decided that they’d rather the world came to an end than see a virtual world government telling people like them where to set their thermostats or how fast to drive. They would fight that to the death, just as during the Cold War they would have been prepared to see the world’s great cities incinerated and the skies blackened with radioactive soot rather than give into SOVIET DOMINATION.
When induced actually to discuss this matter about which they are virtually incapable of caring very much, they will pursue familiar modes of selective perception and attention. These can be isolated and criticized, and are rather obvious to anyone not predisposed to agree with them. Can anyone read Levin and doubt that, while searching through authorities, if he found 10 supporting the GW case, he’d keep on reading until he found an 11th whose doubts could be inflated until they seemed to outweigh and overwhelm the 10 contradictory positions?
It may even be that #11 is more right than #s 1 to 10, but in a political context people who don’t begin with Levin’s biases and prejudices, and who are incapable of assessing the science for themselves, have to go on apparent credibility – perform their own discourse analysis by way of intuition. They may not be able to perform a Foucauldian or Derridean or Althusserian or wheoverian critique, but they can tell when someone ain’t listening and ain’t interested in listening. They can also often sense when someone else is selling them a bill of goods.
Into a state of uncertainty and anger, someone like Manzi comes along with sophisticated but fairly easily understandable, and logical, set of ideas about how to proceed to a less than perfect, but democratically supportable, testable, and criticizeable project. Conservatives should support it not just to reach the best decision on GW, or for the sake of extracting maximum political advantage from Climategate, but for the sake of the entire policy process, the good of scientists, and the good of all political participants.
There are some statements, that knowledge and or experience, prove that are beyond debate. I’m not going to ever accept that Fidel had the right idea, McCarthy is not going to accept that Militant Islam is a good move, and in light of the patent fraud of the IPCC (re the most recent browse) AGW is a sham. Now Mr. Sanchez wants to accept that as a premise, just as surely as he’ll support the ‘war on drugs’ sure when pigs fly. Why accept a lie as truth, maybe we go overboard in challenging a premise that is so ludicrous. First, the evidence isn’t there, and the measures to solve this non existent crisis. But the first is a priori
@ CK MacLeod:
Just for the record I tend to be in about Manzi’s camp on AGW; but, having read his initial gratuitously insulting post I can’t say he will in future have much of a platform to argue about treating others with intellectual respect. I figured he had a bad day or else he was purposely picking a fight in the manner of
FrumAndrew Sullivan.@ Sully:
I believe I addressed the question of Manzi’s tone – which I think probably should have been calibrated more carefully – something Manzi admits when he apologizes in his follow-up post. Otherwise, I think you’re being a little oversensitive on Levin’s behalf.
Anyway, intellectual respect is different from politeness. Sometimes they come into conflict. Taking an imbecile’s ideas seriously may lead to embarrassing said imbecile.
@ CK MacLeod:
In the interest of keeping the epistemic aperture open as wide as possible, I think it’s important to point out the closure inherent in assertions of this kind:
Certainly Levin and McCarthy have an a priori prejudice against a “virtual world government” with the powers you suggest. But their argument is actually that we don’t face the alternative of either accepting that government or going up in the smoke of an overwarmed atmosphere.
It isn’t either a moderate or a “scientific” approach to denigrate people for not accepting that which is far from proven. Levin and McCarthy only look extreme if we accept the premise that our alternatives are world government or incineration. There is no empirical evidence that points to that; there are only limited sets of observations, brokered by fallible humans, and theories that are still in testing.
There is also, of course, the unexamined assumption that whatever we conclude in 2010, even with the best will and methods, is absolutely valid and will remain so over time. Nothing in the history of human science should lead us rely on that assumption. We’ve been wrong about everything since we began keeping written records of our endeavors; we get to more right answers through iterations of failure and disproven theories.
Levin and McCarthy are saying that we haven’t established anything about what our climate’s doing that should trump the national-level guarantee of liberties. What is the evidence that we have?
@ Barbara:
You know, I can’t shake the prejudice induced in me against Craig (who is, admittedly, a brooding hunk) by the following events:
1. The fact that he was picked to be the new bond over Clive Owen, who as far as I’m concerned is way hunkier, and comes already programmed with the accent Ian Fleming endowed his Bond with.
2. Craig’s disclosure, while Quantum of Solace was in filming, of his discomfort with firearms. It just seems so Johnny Depp of him. Haven’t been able to view him in the same light since. What can I say, I guess I’m epistemically vacuum-sealed on that one.
And this is why it’s an epistemological, or perhaps borderline epistemological question. The questions are a) how do or can they know that to be true?; and b) how can the public, we, come to accept that truth?
The first goes to what process for determining the truth they undertake and demonstrate. It can be criticized, and we are free to take or leave what they say, to consult other authorities or analysts of authorities, and form our own opinions.
As for the second, if the manner of argumentation and presentation leaves an unbiased observer with as much or more reason to doubt that process as to trust it, or to prefer someone else’s process, then McCarthy or Levin’s “truth” is the proverbial tree falling in the forest, no one being inclined to listen. Blown up to the level of public policy, that suggests an authority-gathering and -testing process with error-checking.
As Manzi points out in his “apology” post, we have such processes already in place. If they need to be improved, then improving or, in the extreme, replacing them – for the sake of a process that’s more resistant to self-interest and other forms of corruption – is something that non-experts on the underlying scientific questions can fruitfully pursue. Let Lindzen, Lomborg, Muller, and Joe all give their skeptical inputs, but there is no reason for Weitzman, Mann, Jones, or Barack Obama to trust the process if it begins with a pre-determined result, and if all participants aren’t somewhat assured that the “losers” will abide by the results, while retaining whatever agreed-upon future opportunities to amend.
You, JED, like Joe and others here are GW skeptics. I think you could be fairly termed “denialists,” for the sake of discussion, once we remove any pejorative connotation from the term: You deny that GW is a problem. We can likewise define “alarmists” simply as people who are “alarmed” by what they have come to believe about GW. (Of course, the alarmists are also denialists in the sense that they deny the denialists, and the denialists tend to be alarmed about the alarmists, but we’ll avoid moving on to such arguments on the second order and beyond, mainly because we accept going in that everyone has a right to deny or set alarms in a free society, without being pre-judged for his or her denial or alarm.)
McCarthy in one of his responses to Manzi presumes the denialist position when he says, essentially, “GW isn’t a big enough deal for me to be bothered about it when we have wars to fight, an economy to rescue, and political sanity to restore.” That’s what prompts Manzi to ask, “How do you know it’s not a big deal?” How can you or we know or come to accept that it’s not a big deal? That’s when this begins to become an epistemological or borderline epistemological question.
In the public sphere, the denialists can’t be bothered, but the alarmists are super-bothered. A democratic system gives the alarmists a right to be heard without their claims being pre-judged. If they are successful in persuading enough people that the better course is to let them have their way, then they get their way.
Similarly, if a national consensus is reached that we need an income tax, that women deserve the right to vote, that alcoholic spirits should neither be sold nor consumed, that Communism is evil and must be fought, that underwear should be worn on the outside, and that the word “gravity” should never be uttered on prime time TV for the sake of public safety, then that’s the way things are gonna go.
And if the losers on the underwear-on-the-outside controversy come to believe that it was a rigged game and that they and their children and their children’s children will never have an opportunity to restore their briefs to where they belong, then the system becomes to that degree less credible and more vulnerable to eventual breakdown.
And that’s why the political question isn’t and can’t be about GW per se, it’s about how we decide issues like “the GW issue,” including whether the GW issue deserves to be treated as an important issue, and whether that decision on the issue’s importance needs to be reviewed, ad more or less infinitum.
Ck, Weitzman?? Mann, Oppenheimer, Schneider, et al, have been driving the process for 20 years, the possibility of AGW is an important issue, well lets debate it, lets see how they gather and even interpret their data, let’s not take it as a fait accompli.
@ J.E. Dyer:
I find you to be a Daniel Craig denialist.
Daniel Craig is the best Bond. CASINO ROYALE (2006) is the best Bond film. QUANTUM is better than the vast majority of other Bond films.
This is simply the truth, and that so many live in denial would sadden me if I wasn’t used to that kind of thing by now.
@ narciso:
I don’t really care what someone like me – or you – thinks about GW. It’s like asking me to go to bat against major league pitching. I know only enough about science to get things comically wrong and to be misled, pretty much.
I do know something about discourse, and I’ve learned a little bit about political science over the years, and, as an American I have as much right as anyone else, expert or doofus, to weigh in on whether the political process looks fair, and whether participants in the discussion are performing credibly.
I agree with you on Casino Royale, but an hour in what is supposed to be Haiti, a face off in the Atacama desert, plus the plot right out of
the Guardian, too much Bourne influence, Quantum is supposed to be
the successor to SPECTRE, but it just doesn’t pass muster as the big rival
I think it’s kind of a truism that we should be discussing the “AGW issue” in political debate. But unfortunately, the reality or unreality of AGW is inherent to the political issue. Proponents on each side are always going to bring up the assertions they consider believable as part of the argument.
I notice that you speak of “GW,” and I don’t know if that’s deliberate or not. But “GW” is a different proposition from “AGW” in all the ways that matter. Without the “A,” there is not even a superficial basis for assuming any clarity on what is or ought to be “done about it.” If there’s no “A” in the proposition, then at the very least, there’s nothing for man to stop doing.
I don’t agree with the characterization “denialist,” incidentally. Denial implies refusing to acknowledge something, or categorically proclaiming it to be untrue or invalid. “Skeptics” is a more accurate term. Five years ago, I was actually less skeptical of both GW and AGW than I am today. My skepticism has grown with my knowledge of the topic; but it could begin receding again if empirical evidence were to start pointing more incontrovertibly in the direction of GW or AGW.
(Just to clarify, since this question is obvious: when I say “GW,” I refer to the theory that the earth is warming on a seminal and unprecedented one-way trend, as opposed to simply being in a cyclical warming trend of the kind documented in various research disciplines.)
So, anyway, this one is obvious: Put me down as a Daniel Craig Skeptic.
Beer mugs!
@ J.E. Dyer:
I use GW to refer to the broad policy issue. In my view there are, in theory, a wide range of possible combinations of actual-GW, possible-GW, actual-AGW, possible-AGW, in varying proportions. We could conclude or learn, for example, that there had been no recent AGW to the 95% confidence level (the widely mischaracterized Phil Jones “retraction” was of this character), but that at radically higher concentrations of CO2, AGW could kick in with a vengeance. We could conclude or learn that we were in a cyclical natural warming trend, but that human intervention could counteract whatever damaging effects, or that at some point AGW could make it worse. We could conclude that there was no GW, or even that there was Global Cooling, but that AGW was not just possible, but desirable. There are endless possibilities.
Certainly all participants in public discussion will sooner or later end up referring to authorities and their own logic – a fully qualified scientist refers to the “authority” of experimental results and the logic of analysis – but when citizen JED rises up to say that the Hockey Stick’s a joke, she’s always implicitly saying “authority A plus evidence B by way of logic train C has led me to conclude that HS is a joke.” The power of her assertion is that, a free citizen of evident intelligence, she has become a full-blown skeptic. The political question is how much weight to give to the voices of skeptical citizens in the process – on all sides.
In the effort to add to that weight on our own side, assuming we have one, any of us is in a position to make, quoting Manzi’s original Levin post, “a fundamental argument that proceeds from evidence available for common inspection through a defined line of logic to a scientific view.” In the public dimension, quoting Manzi’s reply post, where he imagines a political leader attempting to make a responsible decision in the face of disagreement on facts, the parallel process is “gather together a group of the leading subject-matter experts to produce a review of known science, and subject it to review by a standing body of leading scientists who are not directly in the field in order to minimize both groupthink and opportunities for self-dealing.” He goes on briefly to describe the current process for achieving same.
It was to the second suggestion that McCarthy responded, in essence, “Go away, kid, you bother me.” That won’t be acceptable to all of the evidently intelligent citizens who have come out on the other side from you.
@ J.E. Dyer:
Clive Owen is hunkier, but I think I like Daniel Craig as Bond better.
Quantum of Solace sucked, mainly because Bond was too brooding- trademark humor gone with the Atacama winds. And Narciso, I love ya, dude, but what part of “The whole effing thing is unrealistic” do you not get?
Never Say Never Again was the best Bond film. “Actually, there was this girl in Philadelphia” is one of my favorite lines.
It was too pedestrian a scheme, compared to Zorin’s psychotic earth quake plot, Stromberg’s sub launching super tanker, Drax’s space station, I know Die another DAy, went too far, but there has to be
a happy medium.
Back on thread, epistemic closure, has hit the Times, with all the usual
suspects, and of course, none of the context, well played Jim
narciso wrote:
I sit doubly shocked, shocked (or would that be quadruply shocked?), first that a film with Olga Kurylenko would get dissed at ZC, second that y’all ain’t positively responding to the fact that the evil bad guy was an eco-fraud! And pre-Climategate! Obviously I found the brutal violence and the utterly absurd parachute escape, and inferno art climax more diverting, but y’all are being hard cases. Now I’ve got to do some work so play nice while I’m gone, and never say NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN again.
All right I’ll give Olga and throw in Gemma Arterton, before she was covered in oil, but it’s just grand guignol enough I’m sorry
My best Jack Benny, “Well!”
Excuse me, but I *I* was the one who posted Olga’s pic on this blog.
Let’s bottom-line this sucker: no one cares about the plot. Everyone cares about thinking about being laid by Danny or Olga. And I can’t get into the mood with some sullen guy who makes up drinks so that he can name them after his dead girlfriend.
Reminds me of the time I dated that Lesbian who couldn’t forget Annie, his previous girlfriend. He kept wanting me to see Annie Hall with him. I passed.
Since this topic has reached the Times, and now has gone beyond absurd, I think the House and Senate Republicans need a little epistemic closure, if just to realize why they should oppose such a bad bill.
I really like Casino Royale, even though they run it a little too often lately, the obstacle course on the construction yard in Motaba, the
chase at the airport, the card game itself loses steam, and the torture scene was innovative enough that a recent Gitmo detainee took it for his own narrative
In search of a cynosure,
Toward eschatonic closure,
You find epistemes are closed for,
You can’t immanentize,
And attain worldly ayes,
Which shouldn’t surprise,
For that’s the ruling guys,
From the big kahuna’s assize.
@ Sully:
Well done!
In the next to last line, I suggest altering “rule” to “ruling.” It scans better and strengthens the metaphor at “assize.”
@ Joe NS:
Good suggestion. Done.
@ CK MacLeod: i completely agree with that.
Manzi uses the science as a tool to validate a conservative approach to solve a problem.
He’s my hero.
@ Sully:
A sublime verse, Brother Laureate. I have to say, The Big Kahuna’s Assize would be one honkin’ name for a rock band.
1. Re: Pew Numbers
The numbers of Self-Identified Republicans vis a vis Democrats has changed dramatically since the Pew Poll. Gallup Data is summarized here http://is.gd/bUxrO Its not clear why you’re challenging data that is fairly common knowledge at this juncture.
The Conservative/Mod/Lib data remains constant and the Scientist data is addressed below.
2. Re: Jeff Id, Watts & McIntyre: Looks like one of your other posters at #68 got it right. I would add the following observation, that I have yet to see a Climate Skeptic self-identify as a Liberal. Whether conservative or not, they help illustrate the broader point that the issue of “epistemic closure” might be better hurled at the left as opposed to the right…which is a nice segue to Dr. Curry.
3. Dr. Curry:
You state:
Dr. Curry’s Posts from Mid April are found here: http://is.gd/bUysX and here: http://is.gd/bzKBV
I think you got this one all wrong. As I related before, Dr. Curry states: “I am no longer substituting the IPCC’s judgment for my own judgment on this matter. So if the readers here assess that this constitutes going over to the ‘dark side’ then so be it; my conclusion will be that the minds seem to be more open on the ‘dark side’.”
~This comment explicitly acknowledges that a form of tribalism exists for better or for worse. If she seems contradictory on the issue, its because she IS contradictory on the issue, but there can be no debate as to her conclusions.
~This comment supports my not so clearly stated thesis that “epistemic closure” occurs on the left as opposed to the right. (We can debate whether the AGW crowd is left/middle some other time.)
~In her first post supra she accuses the left/IPCC of Corruption…a pretty serious charge in academia. She continues:
~Is this not a living breathing example of epistemic closure, at least as she sees it, as it applies to the left. Whereas all we have to support the proposition on the right are broad statements with no supporting facts. I’m sure there are some epistemically closed conservatives…is it a core issue requiring immediate action? I haven’t seen evidence to suggest dramatic action.
~In closing, the Curry Posts have two conclusions: 1. The left is closed and sticks to an established narrative and 2. The Right is more open minded. Again we can debate whether Alarmist v Skeptic breaks down perfectly Left/Right on anther day. I propose to you as a general rule, that appears to be the case, and that the open minds are here on the right.
4. Scientists and Intellectuals:
You state:
And your data for that is what exactly?
~Pew Poll Problems
A. As previously observed, the Pew poll is from the height of Obamamania. After HCR I think I’d like to take a look at that Scientist data again given that 50% of the sample came from the Bio-Medical field. http://is.gd/bUBmk
B. The sample comes entirely from the AAAS whose membership breaks down like this: http://is.gd/bUBXt
# Professional Membership
# Postdoc Membership
# Student Membership
# Emeritus Membership
# K12 Teacher Membership
# K12 Teacher with Science Books
So how exactly are Students and K12 Teachers “Scientists”???? There is a serious methodology question here.
C. The AAAS Events Policy list is a treasure trove of Human Rights Activism. http://is.gd/bUC6J It’s easy to see why a conservative scientist might want to affiliate him/her self with an organization that is more scientific and less political. Thus, I’m not sure our polling sample isn’t populated exclusively by Liberals to begin with!
D. Had Pew polled “scientists” in business and in academia in Red States and in Blue States I’d bet you would have vastly different numbers. Take the faculty at U Texas and U California and tell me that they poll as mirror images as the Pew poll suggests. I hypothesize that scientists in corporate America and Entrepreneurs and in academic red states…would lean Conservative and Independent/Republican. We’ll never know because the Pew poll is as skewed as skewed gets. Garbage in, Garbage out.
~Murray Graph Problems http://is.gd/bUCfx
A. First it only deals with white non-Latinos. So I’m not sure that this graph has any validity at all to a broader discussion of America.
B. The nomenclature of the Graph is completely distorted, here are the definitions:
Traditional Upper: Someone at the 95th percentile of income, with a graduate degree, who is a business executive, physician, engineer, etc.
Intellectual Upper: Also at the 95th percentile of income and with a graduate degree, but a lawyer, academic, scientist (hard or soft) outside academia, writer, in the news media, or a creator of entertainment programming (film and television).
Traditional Middle: Same occupations as the Traditional Uppers, but with just a bachelor’s degree and at the 75th percentile of income.
This is a simple vendiagram exercise…Scientists and Intellectuals can be found in large numbers in each of these 3 categories, 2 of which trend conservative .
We could quibble as to whether scientists can be found in Traditional Middle, and if a Bachelor’s Degree precludes a “scientist” designation (which appears not to be the case in the Pew poll) the statistics do not support the conclusion that ALL scientists and ALL intellectuals are liberal or trend liberal…the graph doesn’t show any such thing, absent the the polling sample data, we can’t make any conclusions other than … many intellectuals and scientists are trending conservative and many are trending liberal…anything beyond that is poppycock.
In conclusion, you’re going to need much better data to support your statement. In fact it’s so dismissive of the possibility of Conservative intellectuals and scientists existing that I wonder if a sub form of “epistemic closure” is at work here. This is where I disagree with Sanchez and apparently with your good self. You are buying into the liberal narrative.
Conservative = knuckle dragging pea brained Neanderthal.
Liberal = Bright as a copper penny.
No you didn’t say it, you didn’t have to. It’s the ethos. As if to say Danger Danger Will Robinson….we’ve lost all the smart people!
Why not be open to the possibility that there are thousands, perhaps even millions, of scientific and/or intellectual and open minded conservatives?? Where do you get off coming to a contrary conclusion, its simply not supported by any of the data you’ve provided.
The entire AGW debate suggests to me epistemic closure on the left NOT on the right. My premise is reinforced by the change in support for Climate Change pre-Climategate, and post-Climategate. Pre-Climategate many Conservatives supported the theory of AGW and the probability of attendant catastrophic ecologic disasters. Post-Climategate: The numbers have shifted such that the only people who appear to support the AGW theory are Liberals. That transition has occurred in the USA, Germany and the UK.
As you suggest, the pendulum could easily shift back. Certainly I can see no harm in being MORE informed, who could argue against that? It’s a straw man argument. I simply take issue with the premise that conservatives intentionally and reflexively deride science and intellectuals. Its surreal that you would suggest it.
5. The Panacea
You rely on the following post as a road map for conservatives in responding to new challenges in the 21st century.:
~My first problem with this proposition is that assumes conservatives don’t act in this manner currently.
~My second problem is that the paragraph is a bunch of gobbledygook.
~ What is the average Conservative to take away from this?
That we need to maximize our technical capabilities?…Ok Check…I think we’re on solid ground there…not really a lib/conservative issue.
In the context of a market oriented economy…Ok Check…most conservatives like market oriented economies as far as I can tell.
That can integrate unstructured information…Ok Check …this is where we start veering off into gobbledygook…
If this comment had actual tangible meaning that was useful to the average conservative, which I doubt, I do not see its absence as a critical failure in the conservative movement. What about structured information? What about a hybrid of Structured and Unstructured information?
Maintain a democratic political culture that can face facts and react. Ok Check….9/11, Nuclear power, strong defense, Charter Schools, Free Enterprise Zones, seems like conservatives own this issue. What exactly is the problem? Seems to me that Liberals are stuck in the closed feedback loop, not Conservatives…cite specifics, not generalities.
Nothing has changed since 1972…The Kael Syndrome is alive and well with Liberals. Trapped in the bubble. You can see it in Obama’s gross reference today to “TeaBaggers”. Only a person so far removed from his citizens, so closed off to everyday Americans, could possibly refer to his own fellow citizens in such a gross and unprofessional manner. Any disagreement with Obama has now reflexively become a “Racist” issue; you can’t deny it, you’d have to be obtuse not to see the inflexible closed Liberal response to any criticism of Obama. Reid’s comments on the negro dialect are also educational on this point. So out of touch, so trapped in the Liberal bubble. Even Pelosi’s comment on the Constitutionality of HCR falls into this liberal information bubble. “Are you kidding Me?” The intellectual arrogance, the reflexive racist accusations, the blatant hypocrisy, the “My Party Right or Wrong” attitude…The liberals are digging in, they are closed off to the real world, they have spent 1.5 years keeping Republicans and Republican solutions out of the legislative narrative. You make your point in a scientific context, I am responding in kind and in a broader perspective.
My point is that Mr. Sanchez’ and your concern for the conservative movement is rather misplaced and it seems as if the shoe of epistemic closure fits better on the liberal foot.
6. Assault on Conservatives
You state:
I’m sorry, I don’t look at the tens of millions of US Conservatives as continually assaulting the honesty, intentions, patriotism, and professionalism of scientists and intellectuals. You might characterize Rush, Hannity and/or Levin in this light, but I don’t even see that as justification for such an assault on conservatives…where is this animosity coming from. Conservatives are far from a monolith so to the extent a few may behave as described, where is the proof that the group as a whole can be so described? (I will concede that things like the Creation Museum might be “un-scientific” but it’s not at all clear that evangelicals are still conservative.)
You correctly identify other factors that demonstrate why intellectuals MIGHT be trending liberal. I would certainly argue that the Trial Lawyers have sufficient motive to trend liberal. I’m not at all sure that alleged conservative anti-intellectualism has anything to do with it. Ultimately, your statement is far too broad and is not supported by objective data.
7. AGW
You State
I don’t agree that scientific matters have become political to conservatives…rather I see that scientific matters have become political for liberals…i.e. climategate and AGW. You and I are looking at the same data, and you refuse to see the disease where it is most manifest and wish to suggest solutions for problems that are non-existent.
I’m not going to get into AGW here other than to say the following:
~There isn’t enough data to make any conclusions.
~Climate modeling has completely failed to predict climate.
~There is no consensus and people who advocate the notion that consensus can be reached or should be reached are in fact dangerous to the scientific method.
The Meteor Crater Controversy, Darwinism and the formation of Yosemite Valley Muir v Whitney….are good examples of “consensus” gone wrong.
I think we all agree that properly scientific matters cannot be political, hence the reason that the politicization of AGW should be properly challenged by conservatives at the political level and by scientists who disagree whether conservative, liberal or otherwise.
8. By the Numbers
You conclude by saying we need polemicists, I agree. You go out of your way to make the point that conservatives need to stop being anti-science and anti-intelectual as if that’s an actual problem on the right, and that’s where there’s room for strong disagreement. As an Intellectual Upper, I don’t see it.
Lets assume for a moment that you are correct….does it really matter?
According to various census data from 2000 – 2008 we have about 760,000 active lawyers in America graduating 38,000 consistently year in and year out. So lets say that the graduation rate of professionals reflects 1/20th of the active members of a given profession. If true, there are 520,000 physicians, 760,000 Lawyers, 880,000 PhD’s and 10,000,000 Masters. Effectively, the Scientist/Intellectual Upper category probably comprises somewhere between 5 – 8 million Americans. If every other demographic in America is trending Conservative…why the need to do Intellectual cartwheels and mollycoddle the effete liberals? To what purpose? Why can’t conservatives just be conservatives? Do you really believe that in the current political climate that intellectual Uppers can be moved?? Are they already being moved??? Is their ideological bent financially driven or is it a response to the plebeian masses?
The more interesting statistic would be an analysis of environmentalists and inner city Americans. If conservatives applied themselves to better environmental policy and better inner city policy and made a real tangible difference in the lives of environmentalists and in the lives of the inner city Americans and communicated those policies and their effects clearly, they would make far more inroads electorally and in so doing would drag the the intellectuals towards the middle by sheer force of gravity.
If we’re driving away Intellectuals, who cares? If conservative policies are good for America, intellectuals will come back to the fold. If not, then conservatives pay the price at the polls.
There is plenty of common ground in agreeing that conservatives need to stay current on the science and that we need to be better informed than our opponents. We already are, its just a maintenance issue, a process of continued excellence.
@ After Seven:
1. Pew Numbers:
No reason simply to assume that closing the overall generic ballot gap in the broad population will have greatly affected the numbers among scientists – even if you don’t rely on the excuses commonly offered previously that scientists are overly influenced by a combination of groupthink and self-interest.
We’ll just have to wait and see whether conservative self-identification among scientists has greatly increased. Maybe it’s even doubled! To… 16%… (From minuscule to merely desperately small…)
2. Left more “closed” than the right – could well be. I acknowledged as much from the top. Why should that be an excuse for the anti-intellectualism and extreme closed-mindedness exhibited by Levin and other popular hard right conservatives? If the perception that conservatives are closed-minded on some topics is false, though somewhat prevalent, then one way, among others, to dispense with it is to subject closed-minded offerings to criticism.
Conservatives want to think of themselves as more open-minded and non-ideological in their thinking and beliefs than liberals. That sets a higher burden before them. Merely acting on a blinkered assumption of open-mindedness isn’t enough.
3. You continue to want to recruit Dr. Curry to the right. Until Dr. Curry herself has made the avowals and confessions, you do her a service, or perhaps a disservice, but the conclusion remains premature. You have no idea whether, say, Dr. Curry voted for Barack Obama and would do so again. That she criticizes and may have broken with a nominally non-partisan outfit that you associate with the left is not a greatly significant political fact, unless you believe that there are not and cannot be intellectually, morally, and financially corrupt institutions and individuals of the right.
Unfortunately, in the trenches, including this trench, I see plentiful evidence of closed minds on the right – especially those individuals who persist in the entirely un-conservative framing of a scientific question so that one set of answers must qualify as conservative, the others as liberal. That’s a position worthy of Joseph Stalin, not William F Buckley.
4. You again speculate that an external event – now passage of HCR – might greatly alter the Pew Poll results. For all we know, HCR may have driven a large section of merely rather liberal scientists into the hard liberal or ultra- liberal camps. We just don’t know and can’t know until we do know.
The breakdown of the AAAS membership is irrelevant to the Pew Poll, which was designed to asses political affinities of scientists, not AAAS’ broad membership. Specifically:
I don’t see why you would want to exclude student members of the AAAS, on the other hand, in whatever numbers they made up the sample, in an effort to assess attitudes among scientists. They are presumably grad students, possibly including some undergraduates in the sciences, not kindergartners.
Your C argument runs up its own posterior: That AAAS does liberal things offers anecdotal evidence for the proposition that AAAS is as liberal as the poll indicates. You wouldn’t expect an 8% conservative organization to be purchasing state rooms on the National Review cruise.
Your D argument is more self-serving speculation. You’re asking me to take your “hypotheses” about what a theoretically better poll might show against the bona fides of Pew Research. In other words, on this topic as well as others, when a respected organization produces data you don’t like, they’re “garbage.” Their data and methodology are open for all to see and to make of what anyone will. Their results happen to conform to anecdotal evidence and to other polling regarding the state of political opinion and affinities in the scientific community. Your speculation, on the other hand, merely conforms to your wishful thinking. Excuse me, but I’ll take Pew over “After Seven” for now, without assuming that Pew is the end of the discussion or immune from criticism.
As for Murray’s graph, it illustrates a certain peculiar trend that Mr. Murray, among others, found impressive. No one attached the one-sidedness to the results that you do. Not only am I “open to the possibility that there are thousands, perhaps even millions… of open-minded conservatives,” I presume as much, and use Manzi as an example of the species. The Murray graph appears to reflect a trend, it doesn’t portray a monolith.
As for whether conservatives “intentionally and reflexively deride science and intellectuals,” am I to assume that you do not consider Mark Levin a conservative? Going back for a very long time, many conservatives have been complained about scientism. In the wake of the (A)GW debates, the claim that science has been corrupted has become common, and is thrown around in such a way that, if I were a scientist, I might well find offensive. The misuse and abuse of scientific proceedings occurs on both sides.
5. You claim that conservatives all follow the part of the Manzi suggestion that you find intelligible, and then you proceed to contradict it in your further explication, importing every manner of “I hate liberals” into what is a narrow discussion: Should conservatives, on the question of GW, be advocating for one “side” of the scientific question, or should they be advocating a conservative approach to the scientific question in its political dimensions?
6. The statement of mine that you quote describes “some” conservatives. You go on to concede that three of the most popular conservatives in the country (supported, incidentally, by legions of ditto-ing followers) might justify my description, and yet choose to take offense on behalf of others unnamed.
The reason that I offer no proof of some monolithic conservative anti-scientific closed-mindedness is that I made no claim of a monolithic conservative anti-scientific closed-mindedness.
Seeking offense by exaggerating the statements of others is, however, a good example of one mechanism that often supports “epistemic closure” on the part of some conservatives (as well as some liberals).
7. The main point as to the politicization of science is discussed above. Some scientific matters have clearly become political to some conservatives. Just check this comment thread or, even better, the comment thread over at HotAir, for clear evidence that some conservatives are appalled even at the suggestion that GW-related issues should be assessed without pre-judgment.
8. We have no way of determining objectively what the divergence of the Murray stratum from the rest of the population means. Maybe the other trend lines would be even more pronounced in conservatives’ favor if the Intellectual Uppers weren’t fighting against them. Maybe the other trend lines help drive the Intellectual Uppers further away. There are lots of possibilities.
Even if there was no important political or practical problem or risk involved – I think there might be, as outlined in the top post – I take it as a given that it would be better for the intellectuals themselves (and their students and acolytes) as well as for larger society if they were more open to conservative ideas and insights, if they were exploring and extending conservative approaches in culture, politics, administration, and so on, if they were contributing financially and personally to conservative causes or at worst relatively neutral. We might have a richer and more dynamic culture – a good in itself – and better science and intellectual work, too.
Maybe, for example, the elite media (intellectual uppers par excellence), if less skewed ideologically, would do a better job of exposing supposedly moderate and open-minded presidential candidates for the ideological leftist they are, rather than participating in a sham, thus better enabling a right-trending populace to make a properly informed decision.