A word on Frum's Patriots

I've just finished David Frum's novel Patriots, which is absorbing, insightful and funny. I might be expected to give it a positive write-up, being a friend and sometime colleague of David's. However, be it noted that if I didn't like the book, I would not hesitate to say so here at Quicksilber, given this blog's fiercely independent tradition of presenting my candid opinions to an indifferent world.

It takes place in an alt-universe America, where the economy is dismal, the military is bogged down fighting insurgents in Mexico, and politics is polarized between "Constitutionalists" and "Nationalists." Walter Schotzke, callow trust-funder, gets sucked into the Constitutionalist movement and encounters fanatical activists, scheming politicos, craven think-tank officials, Machiavellian media moguls and more.

Some people might be irritated by this book, perhaps perceiving unflattering parallels between themselves and certain characters at places like the Constitutionalist Institute and the Wall Street Transcript. Some young readers might respond to the book by hesitating to apply for that congressional internship or op-ed page job for which they were aiming. However, some readers might respond to the nuanced narrative by focusing on its glimmers of hope for American political culture.

I found fascinating the tension between realism and caricature, and the grey areas where it's not clear where one ends and the other begins. It was also quite interesting seeing Schotzke's perspective slowly change, as his experience and sophistication grow. In any event, I laughed out loud. And if I could vote for Sen. Hazen of Rhode Island, last of the moderate Constitutionalists, I would do so.

Manzi's Uncontrolled redux

A few more thoughts now on Jim Manzi’s Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society. This follows the positive review I gave the book at David Frum’s Daily Beast blog and the guest post I later ran here at Quicksilber by my father-in-law Prof. William S. Carter, a chemist and industrial hygienist, who was rather critical of the book. This discussion perhaps should take place over a pint next time the several interested parties are in the same city, but here goes anyway.

I believe some of the differences between Bill Carter and Jim Manzi reflect tensions between working scientists and the much smaller group of “philosophers of science.” Although Manzi is not a professional philosopher, his book draws heavily upon that academic field, with an emphasis on Kuhn and Popper. Manzi’s statement “In science, theory precedes experiment” reflects a strain of thinking in philosophy of science that experiments are “theory-laden” — that scientists’ collection and interpretation of data is heavily influenced by preconceptions.

How much merit there is to that line of thought I don’t know; taken to an extreme, it could generate the sort of postmodern gibberish deflated by Alan Sokal’s famous hoax. But where Bill dismissed Jim’s statement as “false,” I’m inclined to say “debatable.” (I’ll take the liberty of some first-name usage, though I haven’t met Manzi.) While I understand there is back-and-forth in the philosophy of science about this sort of thing, I think it is fair to say that scientists tend to be unimpressed by such philosophizing; and the philosophers reciprocate by thinking scientists don’t take philosophy seriously enough.

Some of Carter’s criticisms emphasize that Manzi’s discussion would be more thorough if he had addressed things he did not delve into (blinding, confidence levels, etc.). Such criticisms are fair enough, though it’s also true that Jim wrote a pretty dense and wide-ranging book as it is. I would’ve liked to see something on some topics Bill didn’t mention, such as why scientists are confident on matters of evolution and climate change that are not generally addressable by controlled experiments. A good answer, I think, is in philosopher Susan Haack’s analogy of science to a “crossword puzzle” with interlocking lines of evidence. Maybe we can all agree there’s material for a second Manzi book.

Lastly, I note that Bill was unimpressed by what he called Jim’s “political rhetoric” and “libertarian statements.” As someone who’s had a lot of exposure to libertarianism (and growing disagreements with it), I would not be surprised if Manzi’s “liberty as means” and defense of the welfare state get him some negative reviews from uncompromising libertarians. We’ll see. In any case, Uncontrolled is a book that provokes some interesting discussions.

Guest post: A dissenting view on Manzi's Uncontrolled

I recently gave a positive review to Jim Manzi's Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society at David Frum's Daily Beast blog. I then passed the book on to William S. Carter, Emeritus Professor, Environmental Safety and Health at the University of Findlay, who happens to be my father-in-law. Bill was less impressed by the book; his review is below. —K.S.


Jim Manzi's book Uncontrolled is a bold attempt to apply the scientific experimental model to public policy. To complete his application Mr. Manzi should first provide a more complete description of the scientific method. He fails to define the concept of hypothesis, but proceeds to intersperse the use of hypothesis and theory. The scientific method requires the developing of a hypothesis or several hypotheses and then testing those hypotheses with data. Most often in testing a hypothesis the experimenter describes two hypotheses, an affirmative hypothesis and a null hypothesis. The data collected is compared for the experimental group relative to a control group. Either random selected or otherwise carefully selected cohorts are selected to minimize the potential for bias. The results may demonstrate a difference, determined by a statistically significance test.

When determining whether the data sets are significantly different requires that the experimenter to determine, preferably beforehand, what level of significance is acceptable. A 99% significance level may be preferable to a 95% or 90% since there is a greater confidence in the statement that the outcomes are differences. In some situations, and often in pharmaceutical clinical trials, a 95% confidence levels is considered acceptable to proceed to make a professional judgement.

In Mr. Manzi's discussion he fails to explain the difference between correlation and causality. Typically a single experiment only demonstrates a correlation. Additional data obtained from separate experiments are needed to develop a causal relationship. Mr. Manzi references John Mill and Sir Austin Hill on how to determine likely causality. In fact Hill outlines nine criteria that could be employed to determine whether statistical associations are indeed causal associations. Failing to discuss these important aspects weakens Manzi's argument. Regression analysis is a process of showing multiple relationships between possible independent variables and a single dependent variable. Again no causal relationship can be concluded based on the mathematical calculations, as implied by Manzi. Perhaps Manzi is too quick to jump to the same conclusions that imprudent readers jump to in reviewing well constructed scientific papers.

An example of the conclusion jumping occurs on p. 88 where Manzi discusses studies conducted in Ghana. In reviewing the hypotheses put forward as a result of the study, he concludes they are all false. The data does not appear to refute the null hypothesis and therefore no conclusions should be drawn. Researchers would have to either collect more data to demonstrate a statistical difference or reformulate the affirmative hypothesis. With the possibility of many confounding variables (what Manzi calls high causal density) the possibility of the outcome resulting in affirmation of the affirmative hypothesis becomes less likely.

Again on p.159 Manzi's statement "In science, theory precedes experiment" is false. In science initial data encourages development of hypotheses which then need to be tested. Science is a continuous iterative process of attempting to prove or improve on a hypothesis. When there is a large body of information that can be culled together to develop an over arching concept this information is pulled together to form a theory.

There is a limited discussion of the importance of blinding to limit or attempt to control bias. In clinical trials single blinding occurs when the patient does not know whether she is being treated or has received a control or placebo. In double blind, neither the patient nor the direct experimenter knows which cohorts are being treated. In triple blind experiments not only do the patient , experimenter, but also the person(s) doing the statistics not know who has been treated and who is a control.

When Manzi gets to Chapter 13 he wanders off into another world. It is not clear to me whether he chose to enter a political arena to sell the book or whether the gobbledegook that he writes is written to try to tie his arguments into the latter chapters. Whichever, the chapter seems totally irrelevant and leads to a weakness of his credibility in his final chapter 15 recommending "Sustainable Innovation."

Chapter 15 provides a reasoned set of recommendations to improve public policy. Manzi claims his argument is based on his previous chapters. In fact some of his suggestions seem to be disconnected from previous chapters. He states there is a need for decentralized innovation, however his examples argue for innovation with no justification for decentralization. In fact, he argues for strong oversight by a federal authority similar to the FDA for studying public policy issues such a medical delivery, education and criminal justice. Innovation requires some form of supervision of the studies to coordinate and evaluate the study results. All human studies require an Institutional Review Board so that we do not repeat unethical or illegal tragedies such as the famous Tuskegee syphillis study.

Some of the proposals he suggested have merit. He advocates increasing the number of students pursuing science and math. He recommends automatically issuing H-1B visa to international students graduating with appropriate math and science degrees.

However, others have problems. For instance, his suggestion to privatize schools are structured to benefit the stockholders. How is that an improvement over union contracts benefiting the teachers? Establishing a financial mutually funded institutions where the parents (or students) make the investment and reap the benefits. We need a common knowledge bases for upper level learning (high school or college) or else colleges will spend even more time than they do now in remediation education. Funding at a limited number of research institution will only exacerbate an already existing problem. Federal funding that funnels money to a limited number of "successful " institutions restricting innovative thinking. Many good ideas have sprung from smaller institutions and projects started on a shoe string. We need to be able to foster those innovative ideas with a spreading of federal funding, not shrinking the institutions who are considered to be "eligible."

Overall this book would have greater value if the political rhetoric (libertarian statements) would have been left out. A clearer statement of the scientific method and how it could be applied to public policy could turn this book into a useful and more widely read reference source.

— William S. Carter, Ph. D. CIH

Emeritus Professor Environmental Safety and Health
The University of Findlay
Findlay, OH 45840

Next Congress

My latest article for Research magazine is now online: "The Next Congress," focused on how the elections will play out for committees and legislation involving the financial sector. Opening:

This year’s congressional elections hold considerable potential to reshuffle power on Capitol Hill. Neither the Democratic majority in the Senate nor the Republican majority in the House has a secure grip on control of its respective institution. For the financial sector, the stakes include the future of the Dodd-Frank regulatory framework and the composition of the key committees overseeing financial services industries.

Congress, indeed, is one of the few institutions rivaling Wall Street in unpopularity at present. An April average of polls tracked by the website Real Clear Politics showed job disapproval ratings for Congress at 78% and approval ratings at 14%.

Whole thing here.

Population transfers

I'm fairly pro-immigration, and I think it's an intriguing idea to let states set different standards for attracting immigrants, but what in the world is Mike Bloomberg talking about here?

The report noted that Canada allows its provinces to set different immigration standards to attract the type of employees each region needs. 

The mayor quickly endorsed a similar proposal for US states — and then some. 

“There’s no reason why you have to have a common immigration policy for all of America,” he argued. “You could let each state do it differently. 

“I would argue the federal government should go one step further. They should deliberately force some places that don’t want immigrants to take them, because that’s the only solution for these big, hollowed-out cities where industry has left and is never going to come back unless you get some people to move there.”

Emphasis added. If that's not a recipe for social strife and disintegration, I don't know what is.

Some 1950s semi-nostalgia

This is interesting, both because of what David Frum has to say and because of Joe Posner's creative graphics.



Speaking of the 1950s, I am about two-thirds of the way through Eisenhower in War and Peace, at the point where he's dealing with Quemoy and Matsu. One interesting theme of the book is that, as president, Ike was often at odds with the conservative wing of his party, more so than I would've thought.

Last Lion ending

Good news: The long-awaited last part of a trilogy, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965, is coming out later this year (and already available for pre-order). It was completed by Paul Reid, who took over the project after William Manchester's death. Some more info is here, by Steven Hayward at PowerLine.

One point: I don't agree with Hayward's contention that Manchester portrayed Churchill as a Victorian throwback, this being the key to his greatness. Very early on, in the first volume, Manchester quoted Clement Attlee's description of Churchill as like a "layer cake" with nineteenth and twentieth century slices but also earlier ones "and another, curious, layer which may possibly have been the twenty-first."

Third-party fizzle

A few months ago, I wrote about Americans Elect: "The organization’s potential to shake up the 2012 race is considerable." Maybe not.

Review: Manzi's Uncontrolled

Over at David Frum's Daily Beast blog, I review Jim Manzi's Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society. Excerpt:

Manzi is a software entrepreneur who has made a mark in conservative commentary in recent years at National Review and the Manhattan Institute. This complex book puts him in a tradition, with Friedrich Hayek and Sir Karl Popper, that emphasizes limits to knowledge of how societies work and thus views government intervention and centralization with wariness. I will return to Manzi’s political arguments, but I think a substantial part of Uncontrolled’s value is in its sharp thinking about how various disciplines seek reliable knowledge.

 Physics and chemistry have made great headway, in major part, because they study phenomena that are relatively simple and suitable for controlled laboratory experiments. Astronomy similarly benefits from its subject’s low “causal density,” in Manzi’s apt phrase, with the natural conditions of isolated celestial bodies allowing repeated observations that approximate lab experiments (plus the field has tight linkage to physical laws that have been corroborated experimentally).

Whole thing here.

Brooklyn Dionysium

Todd Seavey, whose Lolita Bar debates I frequently attended and participated in, has a new event series, the Dionysium, located in a bar in Brooklyn. The first event, on May 17, features Brian Doherty discussing his book Ron Paul's rEVOLution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired. Logistically, my attendance at that event is problematical, and I do look at the libertarian movement with considerable detachment these days, in no small part because of Ron Paul, but nonetheless I'm sure this will be an interesting start to a promising series.

Books on diverse topics

More and more people I know are publishing books. Most recently, besides David Frum's Patriots (of which I'm awaiting my paperback), there is Lawyers, Guns and Photos: Photographs and Tales of My Adventures with Warren Zevon, by my friend George Gruel. This Wednesday, I believe, George will be appearing on Gabe Wisdom's radio show to talk about the book. Also: I just met Patrick Ciser, ex-policeman and karate teacher, whose Budo and the Badge: Exploits of a Jersey Cop has just come out.

I have my own ideas for books, though whether the 21st century public is ready for them we'll have to see. Meanwhile, I am busy reading, for an expected review, Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society by Jim Manzi, whom I don't know personally.

Christie's future

My May column for Research magazine is now online: "Christie's Path," looking at the political trajectory of Gov. Chris Christie. Excerpt: 

For Romney and his team, considering a choice of Christie means weighing some formidable upsides and downsides. Christie’s style could be seen as a liability, amid concerns about teamwork and tact. Then again, Christie’s tone has been vital in generating enthusiasm for him among conservatives, overshadowing some substantive disagreements with the right, including on gun control and climate change. Forcefulness can be a valuable asset in a vice presidential candidate — or a vice president.

At the same time, Christie has shown an ability to appeal beyond the conservative Republican base. He has been broadly popular, with approval ratings in the high 50s, in New Jersey, a state that has been firmly Democratic in recent presidential elections. Christie on the ticket would raise the possibility that New Jersey, with its 14 electoral votes, just might swing Republican this year. Then again, that is far from a sure thing.

Whole thing here.

Erie Canal research

Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to tour the Erie Canal route in the Albany area with Tom Carroll, science historian and executive director of the Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway, an education and preservation organization. This gave me an up-close look at sites where DeWitt Clinton would've inspected the route or sailed through it once the canal was built, and what they look like now.

This nondescript parking lot in Albany was recently discovered to be the site of Lock 1 of the original Erie Canal.

That stone in the foreground is a remnant.

Somewhat further north, some much more visible infrastructure.

A portion that ran along the Schuyler estate; the nearby house was destroyed by vandals in the 1960s.
There was not much NIMBY sentiment back in the 19th century; people wanted the canal to be close to their houses.

A building where the mules that towed the boats were housed.

A lock of the enlarged canal, built a couple of decades after the original.

Remnant of a weighlock, in which boats were weighed.

The Cohoes Falls, an important source of power generation.

An example of reuse of the canal route for recreation.

Clute's Dry Dock, once a bustling place of boat building and repair.

This tour was pursuant to my writings on history relevant to DeWitt Clinton including family history, as my wife and our son DeWitt are descendants. (See links in "DeWitt Clinton Family" box to the side of this blog.) It also was an eye-opener as to the value and potential of the canal infrastructure as a New York State asset and attraction. Along the way, we ran into several people with a strong sense of that, including Brian U. Stratton and John Callaghan, respectively director and deputy director of the New York State Canal Corporation. Friendly people from the Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway were on hand as well at the A.C. Stevens nature and historic preserve shown below.

A relocated bridge designed by famous 19th-century engineer Squire Whipple.

A view of the canal from the bridge.

UPDATE 1/25/13: I've posted a PDF of my articles relevant to DeWitt Clinton and family.

UPDATE: What I'm working on.

Calculating odds and ends

-- Looking for Continuing Ed credits relevant to your Chartered Financial Analyst designation? Read my article "Fiduciary Matters."

-- Speaking of CFAs, the CFA Institute is asking "Does Quantitative Investing Have a Future?" The piece includes a link to an interesting abstract "The Quant Delusion: Financial Engineering in the Post-Lehman Dodd-Frank Landscape,"the article of which opens with:

"In 1993, the U.S. Congress cancelled the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) Project."

I wonder: is someone now working on a book that starts with the SSC cancellation and ends with the financial crisis? Or has it already been done?

-- Since a portion of the regular readership of this blog is known to be employed in the actuarial field, here's one more link, from the (crisis-plagued) month of Nov. 2008: "Actuaries Versus Quants."

Pro-science Republicans [updated]

Physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in 2009: "funding for science under Republican administrations has been historically higher than under Democrats."


I'd not previously come across this clip, and it does give some food for thought. What he said, of course, would not continue to be true if, say, Ron Paul or Rand Paul became president, although that's something that isn't going to happen (I'm pretty sure). Anyway to me his point underscores an important failing of the "Republicans are anti-science" meme, which is that it's a snapshot, and a partial snapshot at that.


UPDATE 4/18: Via Instapundit, I see that Tyson recently wrote a post on Wired on "We Can Survive Killer Asteroids -- But It Won't Be Easy." His conclusion:

If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, we would be the laughing stock of aliens in the galaxy, for having a large brain and a space program, yet we met the same fate as that pea-brained, space program-less dinosaurs that came before us.

Note how the comments section quickly sinks into partisan acrimony, despite the lack of a clearcut partisan angle to the asteroid issue. Sign of the times (especially in an election year).

Philadelphia talk [rescheduled]

Very early notice: I'm slated to speak at the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking on Sept. 15 Nov. 17 on the (provisionally titled) topic "Politics vs. Science." This will be a chance to discuss the political climate for science programs and how attitudes toward science vary across the political spectrum. Some of my relatively recent writings on relevant topics include:

"David's Book Club: The Republican Brain": Review of Chris Mooney's book at David Frum's Daily Beast blog.
"Reply to Mooney." More on the above.
"How the GOP Should Explain Climate Change."
"Ron Paul's Spaced Out Plan."
"NASA's New Rocket Won't Reach New Frontiers."
"Can Conservatives and Scientists Get Along?"
"Don't Surrender Our Telescope Advantage."
"NASA's Budget Grounds Space Probes."
"Paul Plays Politics with Physics."
"Why Scientists Hate Republicans."

Rescue impact

Newark Mayor Cory Booker's heroic rescue of a woman from a burning house the other night will raise what was already an impressive national profile for a local New Jersey official. However, according to some political analysts quoted in The Record, the event's impact on his political career is likely to be limited. They cite, for instance:

the case of Tom Barrett. The Milwaukee Mayor was heralded as a hero when he was bludgeoned with a tire iron while intervening in a 2009 domestic dispute, but he still narrowly lost a bid for governor the following year. Mitt Romney’s Jet Ski rescue of a six men and a dog from a sinking boat in 2003 has barely been mentioned in his presidential campaign.

Huh? was my response to that last sentence. Further research digs up this

Reviving Evita

At a long-awaited outing with friends, we saw the new Broadway version of Evita.

 


Overall, though it was staged and performed with skill, I still have to agree with this piece, which suggests it doesn't measure up to the original. I saw the original in 1981, I believe, and by that time Patti Lupone was no longer in it. This time around, as it was a matinee, we saw the alternate, Christina DeCicco, not Elena Roger. DeCicco's acting was excellent, though her voice at times was a bit shrill; on the other hand, is not the character supposed to be shrill?

I'm not sure, also, whether Mandy Patinkin was still in it as Che/narrator when I saw the original, and in any case my memories are surely filtered by having listened to a tape of the original many times in the intervening decades. While Ricky Martin's voice is beautiful, his rendition is less forceful than the original, as when Che demands "What's new Argentina? Your nation, which once had the second largest gold reserves is now bankrupt" etc. I recall in the original Che is close to raging as he says this, and then gets knocked on the head and carted off by secret-police goons. Much calmer stuff this time around.

More broadly, I thought the choreography in the original was more dramatic, as when the upper class and military march across the stage in "Peron's Latest Flame" (see below), rather than standing around. Still, having said all that, I recommend seeing the current Evita. All in all, it's still very good.

 

Frum's 'Patriots'

I haven't read Patriots, David Frum's new novel, but am looking forward to doing so.

Reply to Mooney

Chris Mooney responds, and includes some complimentary words ("mostly...very fair"; "the first seriously engaged critique") before saying that "there is one thing that [Silber] gets factually wrong, in my opinion," that being my description of the science in the book as "rather provisional." Excerpt from Mooney: 

There is a large body of consistent psychological research on the differences between left and right, across countries. What’s much newer is extending this research into other domains–cognitive neuroscience, physiology, genetics. But even here, the new results are consistent with the preexisting psychology studies.

In other words, a large body of evidence was accumulated in psychology, and is now being re-confirmed in new fields by new scientists. It’s hard to see how this situation could exist unless there was something real that all the different researchers were detecting, albeit in different ways and with different methodologies. So I agree, this is not physics or climate science. But I disagree with the idea that the science involved is “rather provisional.” Rather, I would submit that the more you dig into and read this research, the more you’ll see how extensive it is.

Mooney cites support from neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni, whose tweets about my critique include this remark:

Seriously it's such a mindless refrain to say that the science is not conclusive.

 Iacoboni's input is a good example of how substantive debates can degenerate into empty sneering, especially on Twitter. As for Mooney's far more thoughtful rebuttal, it seems to me a matter of opinion, not straightforward fact, as to whether the science described in his book is "rather provisional." (And if not, why does Mooney add "in my opinion" to his "factually wrong"?)

It is clear -- and Mooney acknowledges -- that  he is on considerably firmer scientific ground in adducing evidence from psychology, such as personality tests, than he is in tying his argument to neuroscience and genetics. As far as I can tell, the entirety of his Chapter 6 (titled "Are Conservatives from the Amygdala?") is based on science that is "rather provisional" or perhaps even more provisional than suggested by the modifier "rather." Considering that the book is titled The Republican Brain, I think I made a fair point in noting the limited development of the neuroscience involved.

As for the psychology data and particularly its extension "across countries," I think the differences various observers have noted between American conservatism and its international counterparts with regard to acceptance of well-established scientific theories in physics, biology etc., provide an obstacle to Mooney's thesis of the importance of non-cultural factors in conservative dogmatism and reality-denial. At the very least, it seems there's fertile ground for future research in trying to make sense of the cross-cultural data.

I wonder: Would a poll of psychologists and neuroscientists show they overwhelmingly agree with a list of assertions about the relevant science extracted from Mooney's book? Would they agree that I am factually wrong in describing the science as "rather provisional"? I would be interested in seeing that data.