Agnosticism at The Altar of Science
So … it's been a long time (more than 2 months) since my last post, when I said I would try to post regularly.
Oh well, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Right?
Actually, the path to blogging hell will be the subject of another post soon. You know … whenever soon gets here.
Meanwhile, since I don't have time to think or write at this moment, I'm going to share a Facebook post I shared a couple days ago … in response to a meme that said “Imagine a World Ruled by Scientists, Not by Politicians.” I commented “Probably a bad idea” on the post. The woman who posted the meme replied with a question mark. So I fired back an off-the-cuff explanation that I have a couple of problems with that idea. First, the idea of scientists being holy priests of any sort … and also the idea that politicians are by nature (as in 'inevitably') corrupt and unnecessary to governance of complex societies. Both of those things are just wrong.
But I'll just share my response ….
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Scientists can be very good at what they do and still not have a clue about how to direct societies in any sort of equitable or compassionate way. In fact, equity and compassion are simply outside the logic systems of many engineer and technocratic types, and without intercession by politicians they make terrible leaders. Remember … Eugenics was promoted by scientists … and before that, “Social Darwinism” played a horrible role in shaping scientific norms, and therefore policy outcomes that were just horrid. Tuskegee Experiment anyone?
In real life, when the engineers and scientists get too powerful, they tend to make very destructive decisions about how to manage societies … typically in the name of “progress.” History is full of this kind of “science-driven” policy-making. Urban renewal, for example, and the whole Robert Moses paradigm of solving urban problems, have been very destructive forces in American modernization. The “Green Revolution,” despite that it solved the Malthusian problem of global starvation, has introduced a complex constellation of new problems that threaten our world. And the list goes on and on.
So these kinds of issues always … ALWAYS … require a trade-off that to the scientist and engineer's mind may look good because 'they're logical,' but to poor ghetto dwellers and migrant farm workers, or to suburbanites and small farm holders, they often look and actually be life threatening. That's natural. because every policy decision involves a value judgment that is traditionally outside the framework of the scientist's purview. And Milton Friedman's old [little known but good] bromide that “Economics is when I have it. Politics is when you want it,” is a constant truism and tension that scientists are not experientially, emotionally, or intellectually prepared to deal with.
This is why in his paradigm-establishing work, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley excluded engineers and scientists from the “Delta” caste, the highest of that 5-tiered system, which was responsible for making policies and establishing goals. In this system, scientists could at best achieve the Beta Caste … and only then if they proved to be good managers. Most were relegated to the middle Gamma Caste, which was the realm of trainable and highly skilled workers who did not have the ability to think critically about more abstract problems.
I don't know what your experience has been with engineer types, but in my own experience, Huxley was exactly right. Technicians, engineers, and workaday scientists are typically very clever … about what they do. But much too often, that cleverness does NOT extend to other domains of their experience, and in no way qualifies them to be policymakers.
The vocation of “politician” is unfortunately too denigrated in most countries. It's understandable, to be sure, because at their best, politicians are promoting the well-being of a particular constituency or interest group. And at their worst, they are simply incompetent, or self-serving crooks abusing their power for personal gain, or committed to some brutal ideology that champions brutal imposition of elite rule and systematic injustice … like the current GOP.
But politicians … at their best, or even when they're middling, really do have people skills that promote the likelihood they'll be able to collectively represent diverse populations in a positive way … much better than a panel of scientists could. Meanwhile, when scientists get elected to office, do they do better than the average lawyer? Nah … just look at the current medical doctors in Congress, and note that most of them are authoritarian jackasses.
Anyway, I could write on and on about this subject … it's long been a fascinating question to me. I've put some effort into researching it from various angles, and there's a considerable literature of social science and history about projects that have been directed largely by scientists that have gone very astray — ranging from proposals for utopian societies to mass murders. Polities have every reason to be afraid of unregulated 'technocracies' … which is by and large what a government of “scientists” would promote.