Bari Weiss interviews Peter Thiel. There’s a two-hour video and, below it, an edited transcript.
Science
Science, Expertise, Trust…and Peanuts
Yann LeCun, who is Chief AI Scientist at Meta and an ACM Turing Award Laureate, is obviously a very smart and accomplished guy. At X, he has been arguing for the trustworthiness of science and scientists and asserting that it makes sense for scientists to lean Left…because “they care about facts.” (here, for example) I don’t think many of us would disagree with the value of the scientific method and the importance of objective information; I do feel, however, that Yann’s remarks fail to address the importance of funder pressure, peer pressure, and Groupthink on scientific priorities, scientific conclusions, and especially on what gets asserted as The Science by media and politicians.
There has also been some discussion of this cartoon and various experiences that various people have had with doctors who wouldn’t listen.
Very relevantly, there is an article in today’s WSJ about peanut allergy. The writer, Dr Marty Makary, says that concern about these allergies that began to rise in the 1990s…but that in fact, peanut allergies at that time were rare and mostly mild. But starting in the year 2000, the prevalence began to surge:
What had changed wasn’t peanuts but the advice doctors gave to parents about them. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) wanted to respond to public concern by telling parents what they should do to protect their kids from peanut allergies. There was just one problem: Doctors didn’t actually know what precautions, if any, parents should take. Rather than admit that, in the year 2000 the AAP issued a recommendation for children 0 to 3 years old and pregnant and lactating mothers to avoid all peanuts.
The AAP committee was following in the footsteps of the U.K.’s health department, which two years earlier had recommended total peanut abstinence. That recommendation was technically only for children at high risk of developing an allergy, but the AAP authors acknowledged that “the ability to determine which infants are high-risk is imperfect.” Using the strictest interpretation, a child could qualify as high-risk if any family member had any allergy or asthma.
Dr Makary notes that the peanut allergy epidemic is largely a US and UK phenomenon…his African students report no such allergies in Africa, and Makary says that there is also no peanut problem in his own origin country of Egypt. And, interestingly, Jewish children in Israel have one-tenth the rate of peanut allergies compared with Jewish children in the UK, suggesting that genetic predisposition is not responsible for the country-to-country difference.
Many Israeli children are fed a peanut-based food called Bamba, and Dr Gideon Lack, a pediatric allergist and immunologist in London, suggested that early consumption of peanuts leads to a low prevalence of the allergy at older ages. He coauthored a paper making this point in 2008, but (this) publication was not enough to uproot groupthink. Avoiding peanuts had been the correct answer on medical school tests and board exams, which were written and administered by the American Board of Pediatrics. For nearly a decade after AAP’s peanut avoidance recommendation, neither the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) nor other institutions would fund a robust study to evaluate whether the policy was helping or hurting children.
From 2005 to 2014, the number of children going to the emergency department because of peanut allergies tripled in the U.S. By 2019, a report estimated that 1 in every 18 American children had a peanut allergy. Schools continued to ban peanuts, and regulators met to purge peanuts from childhood snacks as EpiPen sales soared.
and
In a second clinical trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015, Lack compared one group of infants who were exposed to peanut butter at 4-11 months of age to another group that had no peanut exposure. He found that early exposure resulted in an 86% reduction in peanut allergies by the time the child reached age 5 compared with children who followed the AAP recommendation.
From 2005 to 2014, the number of children going to the emergency department because of peanut allergies tripled in the U.S. By 2019, a report estimated that 1 in every 18 American children had a peanut allergy. Schools continued to ban peanuts, and regulators met to purge peanuts from childhood snacks as EpiPen sales soared.
Makary is basically asserting that peanut allergy is largely an iatrogenic disease. One would think that if this was the case, the original recommendations on draconian peanut-avoidance might need to be modified. But after talking with an allergist friend, Dr Makary said:
The AAP’s absolutism in 2000 had made the recommendation hard to walk back.
I am sure that there are many, many other examples like this, some of them with a lot worse consequences than the Peanut Panic. It is actually dangerous to treat any individual or institution as beyond challenge. In aviation, the reluctance to challenge authority (as in the case of a Captain and a First Officer) was identified as a significant safety problem quite a few years ago, and is explicitly addressed in the training of flight crews. The same principle should apply more broadly.
The Platonic Form of what Science should be, is subject, when translated into operational form, to all the factors that affect other human activities and institutions: incentives, groupthink, political pressure, ambition, cliquishness, etc.
See also my related post Starvation and Centralization.
Lewis vs Haldane: Another Look
In 1946, there was an interesting interchange between JBS Haldane and CS Lewis. I’ve excerpted it here in the past…given the current revived interest in socialism and even Marxism these days, this argument is very relevant and I thought the interchange would be worth republishing and rediscussing.
Haldane was an eminent British scientist (population genetics) and a Marxist. C S Lewis was…well, you probably already know who C S Lewis was.
Haldane’s published a critique which was directed at the series of novels by Lewis known as the Ransom Trilogy, and particularly the last book of the series, That Hideous Strength. Lewis responded in a letter which remained unpublished for many years.
To briefly summarize That Hideous Strength: Mark, a young sociologist, is hired by a government agency called NICE–the National Institute for Coordinated Experimentation–having as its stated mission the application of science to social problems. (Unbelievably, today the real-life British agency which establishes rationing policies for healthcare is also called NICE.) In the novel, NICE turns out to be a conspiracy devoted to very diabolical purposes, as Mark gradually discovers. It also turns out that the main reason NICE wanted to hire Mark is to get control of his wife, Jane (maiden name: Tudor) who has clairvoyant powers. The NICE officials want to use Jane’s abilities to get in touch with the magician Merlin and to effect a junction between modern scientific power and the ancient powers of magic, thereby bringing about the enslavement of mankind and worse. Jane, though, becomes involved with a group which represents the polar opposite of NICE, led by a philology professor named Ransom, who is clearly intended as a Christ-figure. The conflict between NICE and the Ransom group will determine the future of humanity.
A brilliantly written and thought-provoking book, which I highly recommend, even if, like me, you’re not generally a fan of fantasy novels. I reviewed it here.
With the context established, here are some of the highlights of the Lewis/Haldane controversy:
1) Money and Power
In his article, Haldane attacks Lewis for the latter’s refusal to absolutely condemn usury, and celebrates the fact that “Mammon has been cleared off a sixth of our planet’s surface”…clearly referring to the Soviet Union. Here’s part of Lewis’s response:
The difference between us is that the Professor sees the ‘World’ purely in terms of those threats and those allurements which depend on money. I do not. The most ‘worldly’ society I have ever lived in is that of schoolboys: most worldly in the cruelty and arrogance of the strong, the toadyism and mutual treachery of the weak, and the unqualified snobbery of both. Nothing was so base that most members of the school proletariat would not do it, or suffer it, to win the favour of the school aristocracy: hardly any injustice too bad for the aristocracy to practise. But the class system did not in the least depend on the amount of pocket money. Who needs to care about money if most of the things he wants will be offered by cringing servility and the remainder can be taken by force?
This lesson has remained with me all my life. That is one of the reasons why I cannot share Professor Haldane’s exaltation at the banishment of Mammon from ‘a sixth of our planet’s surface’. I have already lived in a world from which Mammon was banished: it was the most wicked and miserable I have yet known. If Mammon were the only devil, it would be another matter. But where Mammon vacates the throne, how if Moloch takes his place? As Aristotle said, ‘Men do not become tyrants in order to keep warm’. All men, of course, desire pleasure and safety. But all men also desire power and all men desire the mere sense of being ‘in the know’ or the ‘inner ring’, of not being ‘outsiders’: a passion insufficiently studied and the chief theme of my story. When the state of society is such that money is the passport to all these prizes, then of course money will be the prime temptation. But when the passport changes, the desires will remain.
2) Centralized scientific planning
Haldane: “Mr. Lewis’s idea is clear enough. The application of science to human affairs can only lead to hell.” While denying that this is a correct statement of his views, Lewis goes on to say:
Every tyrant must begin by claiming to have what his victims respect and to give what they want. The majority in most modern countries respect science and want to be planned. And, therefore, almost by definition, if any man or group wishes to enslave us it will of course describe itself as ‘scientific planned democracy’.
and
My fears of such a tyranny will seem to the Professor either insincere or pusillanimous. For him the danger is all in the opposite direction, in the chaotic selfishness of individualism. I must try to explain why I fear more the disciplined cruelty of some ideological oligarchy. The Professor has his own explanation of this; he thinks I am unconsciously motivated by the fact that I ‘stand to lose by social change’. And indeed it would be hard for me to welcome a change which might well consign me to a concentration camp. I might add that it would be likewise easy for the Professor to welcome a change which might place him in the highest rank of an omni-competent oligarchy. That is why the motive game is so uninteresting. Each side can go on playing ad nauseam, but when all the mud has been flung every man’s views still remain to be considered on their merits.
3) Democracy and conservatism
Haldane accuses Lewis of being anti-democracy, which accusation Lewis denies. He expands on his views:
I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme – whose highest real claim is to reasonable prudence – the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.
This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldane’s article. He simply cannot believe that a man could really be in doubt about usury. I have no objection to his thinking me wrong. What shocks me is his instantaneous assumption that the question is so simple that there could be no real hesitation about it. It is breaking Aristotle’s canon to demand in every enquiry that degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not **on your life** to pretend that you see further than you do.
Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the change is made, it is for me damned by its modus operandi. The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety. The character in That Hideous Strength whom the Professor never mentions is Miss Hardcastle, the chief of the secret police. She is the common factor in all revolutions; and, as she says, you won’t get anyone to do her job well unless they get some kick out of it.
Professor Haldane’s article can be found here.
Lewis’s response appears in the essay collection Of Other Worlds;, edited by Walter Hooper; excerpts are on-line at this site. There’s also a Wikipedia article on Haldane.
Previous version of this post here.
Worthwhile Reading
Self-censorship among scientists, for ‘prosocial’ reasons…and the harm it does.
How sculpture and ornament-making has been semi-industrialized for centuries, using a device known as a pointing machine.
Selecting government officials in China –historically and at present.
Support for using violence to suppress campus speech, broken down by college major.
The growth of anti-Israel radicalism in the Democratic Party: how much of this has been due to Obama’s attitudes and associations?
The District of Columbia has established minimum education requirements (a high school diploma is not enough) for child care workers. Is there a study that validates a significant positive correlation between such training and the quality of care provided? (What would you guess)
Katherine Boyle argues that some people are great at judging people but not great at judging systems. Others are great at evaluating systems but not people and says that it’s very rare to meet someone who is exceptional at both.
Inspirational: A cancellation attempt that backfired.
The End of Science Education in the West?
New Zealand may adopt a new science curriculum that doesn’t have much actual science in it:
Central concepts in physics are absent. There is no mention of gravity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, mass or motion. Chemistry is likewise missing in action. There is nothing about atomic structure, the periodic table of the elements, compounds or molecular bonding,” he said of the draft.
Rather than physics, chemistry, and biology, the document proposes teaching science through four contexts that appear to draw from fundamental principles of the United Nation’s Agenda 21: climate change, biodiversity, infectious diseases, and the water, food, and energy nexus.
Sounds a lot like the science curriculum that was proposed in the UK circa 2005:
Instead of learning science, pupils will “learn about the way science and scientists work within society”. They will “develop their ability to relate their understanding of science to their own and others’ decisions about lifestyles”, the QCA said. They will be taught to consider how and why decisions about science and technology are made, including those that raise ethical issues, and about the “social, economic and environmental effects of such decisions”.
They will learn to “question scientific information or ideas” and be taught that “uncertainties in scientific knowledge and ideas change over time”, and “there are some questions that science cannot answer, and some that science cannot address”. Science content of the curriculum will be kept “lite”. Under “energy and electricity”, pupils will be taught that “energy transfers can be measured and their efficiency calculated, which is important in considering the economic costs and environmental effects of energy use”. (The above is from John Clare’s article in the Telegraph.)
According to Melanie Phillips: “The reason given for the change to the science curriculum is to make science ‘relevant to the 21st century’. This is in accordance with the government’s doctrine of ‘personalised learning’, which means that everything that is taught must be ‘relevant’ to the individual child.”
2005 was a long time agoI don’t know whether or not this curriculum is still in place in the UK; I use it as an example because it makes a certain kind of thinking very clear. The class is not really about Science, it is about ‘Society’, and everything that is taught must be ‘relevant’ to the child.
And, closer to home, California has a new math curriculum. While math teaching certainly could use improvement, I don’t have a good feeling about this program…see for example this and this, also these comments.
Also, the curriculum includes “data science” as an alternative to Algebra II…see this critique: “Here’s the issue: the data science course is not a good path to a career in data science…It’s math lite for kids who don’t expect to use much math in life. And that’s fine!…as long as the kids KNOW that’s what they’re signing up for. But it’s not being sold that way — it’s being sold as a way to get more kids into data science. …and that’s misleading.”
An actual San Francisco data analytics guy offers this detailed analysis and critique of the curriculum.
Here’s a post with a rather arresting title from a few days ago at Ricochet: She’s a brilliant teacher, perhaps she should stop. At a BBQ, the writer encountered a teacher from his high school days.
Besides my mother, she is the best teacher I’ve ever had. She taught me Physics and Inorganic Chemistry. And the way she taught — understanding rather than memorization — allowed me to ace science and math classes in college and medical school. She helped me so, so much.
She is now 61 years old and is considering retirement. She moved from my public school to a private school, but it’s still wearing her down. She complains that modern students lack curiosity and motivation, while administration and parents pressure her to just give everyone A’s. She teaches how to understand science and math — but they just want her to stamp her approval on their resume. She’s growing increasingly frustrated, to the point where she doesn’t want to go to work anymore.
This is a different problem from the problems of deliberately-weakened curricula, but the root is the same: the belief that acquisition of knowledge is not what matters, rather, what matters is moving through the system and getting that piece of paper. (And, in the case of many updated curricula, ideological indoctrination is also a key objective)