Feb 2, 2023·edited Feb 2, 2023Liked by Andy @Revkin
Ok Andy, you got me, had to go paid to weigh in on this one.... :-)
When it comes to prioritizing threats, there is a larger issue here which should be addressed, because it affects pretty much all issues. We should be wary of counting on the expert class to prioritize threats because they have business agendas which compete with a purely objective analysis.
The expert class are overwhelmingly very intelligent, well educated people with good intentions. There's no problem with their qualifications or morality.
The objectivity obstacle is that they make their living being experts. The problem is money. The experts have spouses, mortgages, children in college, parents to care for etc. And like any of us, these family responsibilities will be prioritized over "the world", as they should be. Thus, business agendas will triumph over intellectual agendas whenever there is a conflict between the two.
Experts are business people selling a product, information and analysis. And you can't sell a product that buyers feel they already have. And so for the expert the business model is to try to sell analysis that their buyers experience as being new, something they don't already have. This business requirement to provide new analysis is a form of bias, a distorting factor. And the impact of this distorting factor is amplified by their expert status. And so we see phenomena like this....
As bad as the pandemic has been and continues to be, it's NEVER going to collapse modern civilization in an hour. And this particular pandemic at least shows no sign of ever being able to collapse the modern world. And thus, as an act of objective reason, our concern about the pandemic should be prioritized way below that of nuclear weapons, which can destroy everything almost instantly.
The problem for experts is that they can't make a living saying that nuclear weapons are a dire threat, because their customers already know that, or at least think they do.
And so for example, we see many experts running as fast as they can towards topics like AI, because that's new territory, new information to be sold, a new product line, a new business opportunity. The problem is that these business agendas don't necessarily align with the threat environment. So for example, while AI is a great business opportunity for experts, it doesn't begin to compare to nuclear weapons as a threat, at least at the present time.
A perhaps even more dangerous form of bias experienced by experts is their relationship with the group consensus. Any intellectual elite who is dependent upon a pay check can only explore so far beyond the boundaries of conventional group consensus thinking. If an experts goes farther than those boundaries the group whom they depend on will stop thinking of them as experts, and rebrand them as crackpots. And to an expert, reputation is everything, so such a rebranding presents an existential threat to their careers and must be avoided at all costs.
If conventional group consensus thinking can meet a challenge, then there is no problem. But if conventional group consensus thinking could defeat a problem, that problem would likely already be solved. And so, the most promising territory for solutions often lies in those set of ideas generally considered to be unrealistic, unreasonable, unworkable etc. Experts typically have a very limited ability to explore this territory.
Finally, what many experts are really expert at is the art of creating the image of being an expert. Think of this as branding expertise. It's a useful skill for sure, but it has pretty much nothing to do with threat analysis, prioritization of threats, or intellectual inquiry. Branding is a business skill, not an intellectual skill.
Here's more evidence. For 75 years the nuclear weapons community has been attempting to meet the nuclear challenge with information, analysis and consciousness raising. And after 75 years there is no credible evidence these approaches will ever work, as much as we wish they would.
But the nuclear weapons experts are locked in to the failed status quo. They've built careers providing information, analysis and consciousness raising, and so they can't really admit that how they make their living has proven to be a waste of time.
One alternative would be for the scientific community to stage a series of strikes, to replace information, analysis and consciousness raising with leverage. But we're unlikely to see such a new approach, because going out on strike is not good for one's career.
The point here is NOT that experts are bad people, for there is no evidence of that. The point is that experts are not really in a position to do the kind of bold creative thinking that the challenges presented by the modern world require.
Ok Andy, you got me, had to go paid to weigh in on this one.... :-)
When it comes to prioritizing threats, there is a larger issue here which should be addressed, because it affects pretty much all issues. We should be wary of counting on the expert class to prioritize threats because they have business agendas which compete with a purely objective analysis.
The expert class are overwhelmingly very intelligent, well educated people with good intentions. There's no problem with their qualifications or morality.
The objectivity obstacle is that they make their living being experts. The problem is money. The experts have spouses, mortgages, children in college, parents to care for etc. And like any of us, these family responsibilities will be prioritized over "the world", as they should be. Thus, business agendas will triumph over intellectual agendas whenever there is a conflict between the two.
Experts are business people selling a product, information and analysis. And you can't sell a product that buyers feel they already have. And so for the expert the business model is to try to sell analysis that their buyers experience as being new, something they don't already have. This business requirement to provide new analysis is a form of bias, a distorting factor. And the impact of this distorting factor is amplified by their expert status. And so we see phenomena like this....
As bad as the pandemic has been and continues to be, it's NEVER going to collapse modern civilization in an hour. And this particular pandemic at least shows no sign of ever being able to collapse the modern world. And thus, as an act of objective reason, our concern about the pandemic should be prioritized way below that of nuclear weapons, which can destroy everything almost instantly.
The problem for experts is that they can't make a living saying that nuclear weapons are a dire threat, because their customers already know that, or at least think they do.
And so for example, we see many experts running as fast as they can towards topics like AI, because that's new territory, new information to be sold, a new product line, a new business opportunity. The problem is that these business agendas don't necessarily align with the threat environment. So for example, while AI is a great business opportunity for experts, it doesn't begin to compare to nuclear weapons as a threat, at least at the present time.
A perhaps even more dangerous form of bias experienced by experts is their relationship with the group consensus. Any intellectual elite who is dependent upon a pay check can only explore so far beyond the boundaries of conventional group consensus thinking. If an experts goes farther than those boundaries the group whom they depend on will stop thinking of them as experts, and rebrand them as crackpots. And to an expert, reputation is everything, so such a rebranding presents an existential threat to their careers and must be avoided at all costs.
If conventional group consensus thinking can meet a challenge, then there is no problem. But if conventional group consensus thinking could defeat a problem, that problem would likely already be solved. And so, the most promising territory for solutions often lies in those set of ideas generally considered to be unrealistic, unreasonable, unworkable etc. Experts typically have a very limited ability to explore this territory.
Finally, what many experts are really expert at is the art of creating the image of being an expert. Think of this as branding expertise. It's a useful skill for sure, but it has pretty much nothing to do with threat analysis, prioritization of threats, or intellectual inquiry. Branding is a business skill, not an intellectual skill.
Here's more evidence. For 75 years the nuclear weapons community has been attempting to meet the nuclear challenge with information, analysis and consciousness raising. And after 75 years there is no credible evidence these approaches will ever work, as much as we wish they would.
But the nuclear weapons experts are locked in to the failed status quo. They've built careers providing information, analysis and consciousness raising, and so they can't really admit that how they make their living has proven to be a waste of time.
One alternative would be for the scientific community to stage a series of strikes, to replace information, analysis and consciousness raising with leverage. But we're unlikely to see such a new approach, because going out on strike is not good for one's career.
The point here is NOT that experts are bad people, for there is no evidence of that. The point is that experts are not really in a position to do the kind of bold creative thinking that the challenges presented by the modern world require.