Scientific research, academic knowledge production, and higher education are under an obscene and direct attack today in Argentina. Milei’s attack is not an isolated case. To a certain extent, it is part of a global phenomenon, i.e. the rampant anti-intellectualism of the “new” right-wing movements and governments, which has certainly accelerated its spread with the last pandemic. Regarding this, I have written about the relationship between anti-intellectualism and the elitist conditions of knowledge production, focusing on our real practices and material conditions as workers of science and higher education here (in Spanish). In this entry I want to stress a different aspect of today’s anti-intellectualism, its consequences vis-à-vis neoliberalism’s own goals.
By attacking higher education and public scientific research, any openly capitalist government is shooting itself on the foot. The purpose of Milei’s government can only be pushing Argentina into an even more subaltern position regarding the global knowledge production. But I think that knowledge production is, like nature, politics, and social reproduction, an area of the “non-economic” sphere of reality without which capitalism cannot survive for (too) long in a given place and time and (in the long run) in general, globally, so this latter aim is also a suicidal decision wherever it is carried out. [click to continue…]
From the category archives:
Academia
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Culture wars have two main functions. First, to split an existing, dominant social or political coalition apart by the clever use of wedge-issues. (Not all wedge-issues are a part of a culture war.) So, a culture war reveals a latent or induces real divergence in a pre-existing coalition. So, for example, how to think about trans-issues has split contemporary feminism apart (especially in the U.K, which is itself an interesting phenomenon). Second, and this mirrors the first function, to induce or solidify unity within a potentially heterogeneous coalition (think of the role of women’s ‘right to choose’ in America’s Democratic party). So, the issue must have salience to what we may call ‘tribe formation.’ (If you don’t like my examples offer your own!)
Now, the term ‘culture war’ is a literalist translation of the German ‘Kulturkampf.’ This nineteenth century conflict involved a major political conflict between Bismarck and the Catholic Church over control of educational institutions (and the content taught) as well as ecclesiastical appointments. In it national/ethnic stereotypes (about the Polish) were used to shift balance of allegiance. One reason I mention this origin of the term because in it we already see many of the later features of culture wars: the significance of education, especially the education of social elites, the role of non-materialist values, including ethnicity/race, religion, and nationalism.
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Robert Farley has replied to my recent post on the obsolescence of naval power. Unlike our previous exchange, a pile-on where I was (as he points out) in a minority of one, Robert’s tone is mostly civil this time, and I intend to reciprocate. Our disagreements have narrowed a fair way. On many points, it’s a matter of whether the glass is half-full or half-empty.
For example, Farley observes that despite Houthi attacks, 2 million tonnes of shipping per day is passing through the Suez canal. I’d turn that around and point out that 4 million tonnes of shipping per day has been diverted to more roundabout routes. However, since we agree that naval authorities overstate the macro importance of threats to shipping lanes, we can put that point to one side.
A more relevant case is that of China’s capacity (or lack thereof) to mount a seaborne invasion of Taiwan. I said that China has only a handful of modern landing craft and that their announced plan relies on civilian ferries. Farley points out that China has constructed 16 large, modern amphibious assault vessels in the past 18 years, with more on the way. That’s more than might normally be implied by the word “handful”, but not in a way that meaningfully challenges my argument.
According to Robert’s link, the ships in question can carry 800 troops, or about 10 000 if all of them were used. That’s enough to do a re-enactment of the Dieppe raid, but not to play a major role in an invasion of a country with a standing army at least ten times as large. And the implied rate of construction (one per year) suggests this isn’t going to change any time soon. This leisurely approach is consistent with the CCPs need to maintain a public position that it is willing and able to reunite with Taiwan by force, along with a private recognition that this isn’t possible and wouldn’t be wise if it were.
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In all the discussion of Leif Wenar’s critique of Effective Altruism , I haven’t seen much mention of the central premise: that development aid is generally counterproductive (unless, perhaps, it’s delivered by wealthy surfers in their spare time). Wenar is quite clear that his argument applies just as much to official development aid and to the long-standing efforts of NGOs as to projects supported by EA. He quotes burned-out aid workers “hoping their projects were doing more good than harm.”
Wenar provides some examples of unintended consequences. For example, bednets provided to fight are sometimes diverted for use as fishing nets. And catching more fish might be bad because it could lead to overfishing (there is no actual evidence of this happening, AFAICT). This seems trivial in comparison to the lives saved by anti-malarial programs
Update Wenar’s claim about bednets, as presented by Marc Andreessen, was thoroughly refuted by Dylan Matthews in Vox earlier this year. (footnote 1 applies) End update
It’s worth pointing out that, on Wenar’s telling, a project that gave poor people proper fishing nets (exactly the kind of thing that might appeal to the coastal villagers befriended by his surfer friend) might be even worse for overfishing than the occasional diversion of bednets.
Wenar applies his critique to international aid programs. But exactly the same kind of arguments could be, and are made, against similar programs at the national level or subnational level. It’s not hard to find burned-out social workers, teachers and for that matter, university professors, who will say, after some particularly dispiriting experience, that their efforts have been worse than useless. And the political right is always eager to point out the unintended consequences of helping people. But we have plenty of evidence, most notably from the last decade of austerity, to show that not helping people is much worse.
In the wake of the sentencing of SBF last week there were two mighty takedowns of effective altruism: one (here) “The Deaths of Effective Altruism Sam Bankman-Fried is finally facing punishment. Let’s also put his ruinous philosophy on trial” by Leif Wenar (Stanford) at Wired; the other and better written, “Neo-Utilitarians Are Utter Philistines” by Justin Smith-Ruiu (Paris) at his (here) Substack (Hinternet). In response Richard Pettigrew (Bristol) wrote a rather sensible criticism, “Leif Wenar’s criticisms of effective altruism” at his blog (Richard’s Substack). On of our very own, Chris Bertram, shared it it on social media with a note that Wenar’s piece was shared widely without “a sober assessment of the merits of his arguments.”
Now, I am an avid reader of Pettigrew’s blog because more than anyone today, he makes on-going debates in formal epistemology and decision-theory available to wide audiences in a relatively fair and relatively accessible fashion. And like the very best blogs, he also shows the salience of different debates within some specialist area to other areas of philosophy (and the sciences/life). I also find Pettigrew rather judicious generally.
Here in the U.S., my home state of Indiana has a new state-mandated DEI initiative: The law specifies that:
“Each board of trustees [of a public college] shall establish a policy that provides that a faculty member may not be granted tenure or a promotion by the institution if, based on past performance or other determination by the board of trustees, the faculty member is:
(1) unlikely to foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity within the institution;
(2) unlikely to expose students to scholarly works from a variety of political or ideological frameworks that may exist within and are applicable to the faculty member’s academic discipline; or
(3) likely, while performing teaching duties within the scope of the faculty member’s employment, to subject students to political or ideological views and opinions that are unrelated to the faculty member’s academic discipline or assigned course of instruction.”[i]
Daniel Kahneman, who was, along with Elinor Ostrom, one of the very few non-economists to win the Economics Nobel award, has died aged 90. There are lots of obituaries out there, so I won’t try to summarise his work. Rather, I’ll talk about how it influenced my own academic career.
You open the app and immediately the algorithm shows you what you want.
All the drivers in the world—and the algorithm someone finds the one who will get you where you want to go, as cheaply as possible!
Uber makes it harder to sustain the myth of “the algorithm.” As I wrote in Mother Jones last month, there are three inputs to the quality of a recommendation algorithm. We tend to focus on consumer data and machine learning expertise, but the third is usually the most important: the size/quality of the “content library” from which recommendations are drawn.
In his latest book, Technofeudalism, the maverick academic-turned unlikely Minister of Finance-turned enfant terrible of European politics Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism has ended. It has not, however, been destroyed by the workers of the world – it has been killed by capital itself. The idea, in a nutshell, is the following. As a response to the combined effect of the privatisation of the internet on the one hand, and the nearly no-strings-attached way with which states have injected eye-wateringly large sums of money into banks and large businesses after the 2008 financial crisis on the other, rent has supplanted profit as the main driver of the global economy. As Varoufakis put it, “Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies in the wake of the financial crisis and the pandemic have ended up supercharging big tech’s hold over every aspect of the economy.” Against the backdrop of a privatised digital world, post-2008 and then post-2020 public investments into the economy have not stimulated growth, because they have not triggered increased investments. Instead, they have enabled “cloudalists” to become digital rentiers, capable of exercising passive control over workers; over users who de facto work for them for free (by sharing and generating precious data); and crucially, over old-school capitalists. [click to continue…]
A wonderful few days in Paris where, among other things, we visited the Musée Albert Kahn in Boulogne-Billancourt, which was closed for a long time for “travaux”, but is now refurbished. I’ve wanted to visit the MAK for years to see the collection of autochromes that are the fruit of the expeditions that Kahn financed before WW1 in the belief that if the peoples of the world understood one another better, they would not go to war. Well. Kahn was also a big promoter of the League of Nations. The autochromes are wonderful but all viewable online, but I was not prepared for the Japanese-inspired gardens that Kahn created. Really worth the visit on their own. (All easy to get to, on the metro btw).
Here’s a link to the autochromes.