Ok so what exactly do you suggest we do in practice. There are endless critiques, but precious little positive solutions. I say this as someone who works in policy, rather being an academic etc
Ok so what exactly do you suggest we do in practice. There are endless critiques, but precious little positive solutions. I say this as someone who works in policy, rather being an academic etc
The policy question is a great question, and I'm still trying to flesh out my thoughts. I'll write more about it when discussing Lecture 8.
For whatever it's worth, I'm not sure you'll like my answer. Policy questions are inherently about politics and power. How scientific and statistical language should inform such power struggles is a moral question. And the last decade has deeply soured me on technocracy.
Ok that sounds all very high level though. And it does sound like "I'm not going to like your answer" just because I'm already dubious of it's relevance. Tax cuts will be weighed up, as will various programs to deal with various social ills. etc etc I'm not very well going to put in a brief "this is a moral question". You don't say. How does that help choose between alternatives? "In this brief I will provide a virtue ethical analysis of this tax on cheese...". Yeah, no.
Sorry, that sounded too harsh. I have just been involved in several discussions like this, with people, like yourself, who are far far smarter than me and far better informed. But they always just seem to end with me feeling that the truly erudite think that it is impossible to really know anything about the social world. I even asked Andrew Gelman a similar sort of question on his blog, and I wasn't really clear that I should be trusting anything more than a scatter plot. Fine I suppose, but again, practical policy decisions have to be made. And it already seems we're drifting in a populist, "post expertise" direction. Unclear if that is good or not.
Ok so what exactly do you suggest we do in practice. There are endless critiques, but precious little positive solutions. I say this as someone who works in policy, rather being an academic etc
The policy question is a great question, and I'm still trying to flesh out my thoughts. I'll write more about it when discussing Lecture 8.
For whatever it's worth, I'm not sure you'll like my answer. Policy questions are inherently about politics and power. How scientific and statistical language should inform such power struggles is a moral question. And the last decade has deeply soured me on technocracy.
Ok that sounds all very high level though. And it does sound like "I'm not going to like your answer" just because I'm already dubious of it's relevance. Tax cuts will be weighed up, as will various programs to deal with various social ills. etc etc I'm not very well going to put in a brief "this is a moral question". You don't say. How does that help choose between alternatives? "In this brief I will provide a virtue ethical analysis of this tax on cheese...". Yeah, no.
Sorry, that sounded too harsh. I have just been involved in several discussions like this, with people, like yourself, who are far far smarter than me and far better informed. But they always just seem to end with me feeling that the truly erudite think that it is impossible to really know anything about the social world. I even asked Andrew Gelman a similar sort of question on his blog, and I wasn't really clear that I should be trusting anything more than a scatter plot. Fine I suppose, but again, practical policy decisions have to be made. And it already seems we're drifting in a populist, "post expertise" direction. Unclear if that is good or not.