When I mention what I’m writing, my dad often suspiciously asks me, “Is it political?”
Here’s how I always want to respond.
If by “political,” you mean “emotional, innumerate, dogmatic, tribal, unfair, and dishonest” then the answer is, “Of course not.” These negative adjectives are a fair description of virtually all popular media – including popular media that agrees with my conclusions. But where popular media go low, I go high. If you want to know what good thinking looks like, start with Superforecasting.
On the other hand, if by “political” you mean “discusses government and society, and evaluates the desirability of government policies and social practices,” then the answer is, “Of course.” That’s what I do for a living, after all.
In a world where almost all political discourse in the second sense is also political in the first sense, it’s easy to see why people would tend to conflate the two. Logically, however, they’re two different animals. And conflating them reinforces this sad intellectual state of affairs.
P.S. I’m debating “A liberal arts education is a waste of time and money,” tomorrow in Spokane, Washington. If you see me there, please say hi!
READER COMMENTS
Maniel
Nov 28 2018 at 12:08pm
Prof. Caplan,
Well said, as usual.
As an engineer, I use three classes of criteria to examine project-related decisions.
1) Programmatic and contextual: Does the proposal fit in to what already exists or what we already do? Why do this – who is our market? Cost-benefit ratio – is it worth it? Are we the right team for the job? Who is the competition?
2) Technical: Is the proposed solution feasible, cost-effective, safe, …?
3) Political: Is the decision independent of programmatic and technical factors?
Kurt Schuler
Nov 28 2018 at 11:15pm
I presume that you will be taking the “anti” position in Spokane, otherwise you are implicitly arguing that the study of economics is a waste of time and money. A good economics education gives its recipient some knowledge of verbal argumentation, quantitative reasoning, history, and social philosophy — or, if you want to think of it in terms of the trivium and quadrivium, all their elements except music and astronomy.
Thaomas
Nov 29 2018 at 9:22am
I’d think that at least history, psychology, political science, and philosophy ought to make the “practical usefulness” cut.
Mark Z
Nov 29 2018 at 10:22am
I’m (somewhat facetiously, but somewhat seriously) inclined to define ‘politics’ as the collection of topics on which it is socially acceptable (or even expected) to have strong, stubborn opinions irrespective of how little knowledge one has on them. So, by with my definition, it’s almost tautological that any topic considered ‘political’ is polluted with low quality discourse.
I imagine if we thought about, say, paleontology the way we think about politics, even everyone who’d never read or thought about the extinction of the dinosaurs for more than a second would nonetheless have an staunch, self-righteous opinion about the merits of the Alvarez hypothesis.
Warren Platts
Dec 4 2018 at 12:10am
There are plenty of such people. Most of them are creationists! 😉
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