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Martin Gurri, a former CIA analyst, joins Sarah and Steve to discuss our information overload, the loss of trust in institutions and figures of authority, and the role of tech platforms.
Show Notes:
-Gurri's book The Revolt of The Public
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“If a politician is promising paradise on earth, I get very nervous.”
Yeah but what if Mexico is going to pay for it?
This was worth the time to listen to, as I have been grappling with this as an intellectual. I also appreciated the (I assume) spontaneous questions Steve asked. I would have to read the book to digest the point of this material more adequately. A couple of things though ...
Gurri is correct, the amount of information out there is just overwhelming and growing geometrically every day. Working in the sciences, it really is impossible to be fully informed on a topic because there is just so much material even in rather narrow disciplines. So to understand any topic, even a Ph.D. level of research would only give you a general perspective on a narrow aspect of a culture, or a particular topic. On the other hand, a Ph.D. does make you more aware of how little you know, so it tends to lead to a little more humility.
On Science:
I think one thing the general public doesn't understand is that people like Fauci are basically saying "this is what I know and these are the best recommendations I have at the moment". At least as a trained scientist, I recognize that models trying to estimate events where we don't have all the information will get things wrong. So what? Do you want nothing, or do you want to get __some__ idea of what is happening with the best models we have? If you don't understand geometric growth, well, SARS-CoV-2 is a good lesson. If you don't understand how frightening it could be, try modeling this kind of stuff for your own self! You are getting the digested information of someone who has been working on this stuff for years, and the inaccuracies, be them as they may, are just a reality. Well digested knowledge is still a lot better than listening to someone snake-oil salesman tell us to drink bleach -- even if drinking bleach ultimately does turn out to be the right answer after much study (which I most certainly doubt).
I think part of the problem is that we have taught science in undergraduate courses as a collection of facts. I do recall that undergraduate physics and chemistry was filled with "we know, we know, we know". The master's degree was "we basically know, we basically know", and the PhD was, "we don't know a darn thing except for a couple of puny islands of knowledge, and even that we don't fully understand". Few people get that far, so they get out with the "we know" nonsense, and they find later than it can be shot full of holes.
On Alternatives:
I grant that we scientists don't always get it right. Evidently, this is where the pseudo-experts have seized the moment (pseudo-experts: people who know some of the language and have read a limited foundation of the literature but do not have the kind of discipline that comes from really having to do science all their life and research a topic at some of the deepest levels). They don't say "I don't know". They have "THEeeeeeeeee answer". ... and since they don't have any reputation to lose, if they fail, they go on to the next answer.
When you do science for a living, you come to appreciate some general consistencies and patterns that occur that are helpful signposts. Any particular solution to any specific problem will details that we can get wrong, but the over-arching features will not be wrong and when the details become available (in a year or two from now with SARS-CoV-2), those facts will become properly refined.
Summary then ...
I see that Steve (and Sarah) are asking some of the right questions. One notable goal of The Dispatch is that there is some effort in the short term (1 week - 2 weeks) to digest information and provide an intelligent summary. That is, I think, an important goal of journalism, is it not? Not merely to whittle out snippets of news, but to contextualize it within a framework and to try to get the different perspectives. Gurri does point out that you need to listen to views left and right and understand them. It does pass through your conservative filters, but that is like passing things through my scientific filters. There are liberal filters, but it is important for liberals to also understand what conservatives think. I don't think I can go all the way to listening to alt-right or communists, but right- or left-leaning is something everyone can do. As more of a liberal than a conservative, I'd say that whereas I don't always agree with Steve, or Jonah, or David, or Sarah, at least I can listen to them. The extremes of the right and the left get a bit intellectually dishonest and I can only listen to it for a short time before I have to turn it off.
At any rate, I think the goal is right, in this time of information overload, to provide some level of digested information that helps people gain some bearing. I do hope that it will finally slow down a little bit because I feel pulled in all different directions without any sense of bearing presently.