Political authority is being handed out by communication style — engineers to engineer-sounding influencers, traders to trader-sounding ones. DOGE is the invoice, and the invoice has now been audited.
As a civil engineer I kind of would like my profession more precisely cleaved off from "software engineers." Like, not because I think I'm smarter, or more important - far from it - but just because what they do is SO different and involves SUCH different mental processes and day-to-day routines and workflows. There are hundreds of jobs more similar to mine that are not called "engineering" so it's a weird umbrella to end up under.
Actually, let's go one step further: split me and and software engineers not just from each other, but from the fancy mechanical/electrical/nuclear engineers, the people with whom I'm always a little embarrassed to be associating my stupid highway design when I call myself "an engineer."
The scales of those studies are massively too small to exonerate social media from anything. And the study of people that were self-selected is basically worthless. I would also point out that there are problems with social media that don’t express themselves as political polarization at all.
You're right that we can't just blame the algorithms. The work of polarizing the American public began after Watergate, with the big breakthroughs being the rise of right-wing radio and Fox News. I think you're right that we didn't need social media to polarize us; they had figured out how to do it on their own. Roughly our current form of polarization was called out by Jon Stewart on "Crossfire" in 1998 (which is ironic, since Stewart eventually hardened into his own partisan/culture war position so completely). I'm not even sure if the New York Times even ran their stories online yet in 1998.
So, I accept that the polarization is not the doing of social media - but I don't think the polarization is a natural expression of human instinct. It is, like Hillary Clinton was once mocked for 100% correctly calling "a vast right wing conspiracy."
I DO, however, think that social media makes people MISERABLE. Which would be worth fixing even if it wasn't coming alongside political dysfunction. And it's likely causing polarization to lead to worse decisions, through giving people bad information. That's what got Trump in office in 2016, fake news - a term hadn't been judo'd into a catchphrase by Trump himself, and still meant "news stories, based on events that did not happen, presented as real, on fake websites, to deceive people". (You know, "fake news.")
Your quote from Andreessen about technology solving problems brings to mind a claim from Al Smith: “The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.”
it's only epistemic trespassing if there is a legitimate owner whose turf you are trespassing on. Outside relatively technical issues covered by political scientist, no one has professional expertise on the big questions of politics.
As an aside, economists (not mentioned) are really terrible trespassers/imperialists but no one else listens even on economics, so it probably doesn't matter.
It's epistemic trespassing when you speak as an authority on topics you are not a legitimate expert in. It's not a matter of credentials or ownership. It's okay to talk about things you're not an expert in and have an opinion on them — even strong ones. I do. I write essays that span many different domains that I am not experts in. But I take care to quote and credit experts in the field for ideas, and rely on public intellectuals from other domains to translate knowledge for me. And again, I credit for that.
But when one does — as many "influencer"-types do — position themselves as economists and philosophers without actually understanding any economics or philosophy other than talking-points they got off of mises.org, then I consider that trespassing. You're not even putting in the work for honest disagreement.
Economists — like all social scientists — have to look across and understand-across domains to do economics. But one must be epistemically responsible in doing so, as my other reply describes.
Economists sometimes trespass in areas outside their expertise. But it's hard to blame them when almost everyone else trespasses inside THEIR area of expertise.
As a civil engineer I kind of would like my profession more precisely cleaved off from "software engineers." Like, not because I think I'm smarter, or more important - far from it - but just because what they do is SO different and involves SUCH different mental processes and day-to-day routines and workflows. There are hundreds of jobs more similar to mine that are not called "engineering" so it's a weird umbrella to end up under.
Actually, let's go one step further: split me and and software engineers not just from each other, but from the fancy mechanical/electrical/nuclear engineers, the people with whom I'm always a little embarrassed to be associating my stupid highway design when I call myself "an engineer."
The scales of those studies are massively too small to exonerate social media from anything. And the study of people that were self-selected is basically worthless. I would also point out that there are problems with social media that don’t express themselves as political polarization at all.
You're right that we can't just blame the algorithms. The work of polarizing the American public began after Watergate, with the big breakthroughs being the rise of right-wing radio and Fox News. I think you're right that we didn't need social media to polarize us; they had figured out how to do it on their own. Roughly our current form of polarization was called out by Jon Stewart on "Crossfire" in 1998 (which is ironic, since Stewart eventually hardened into his own partisan/culture war position so completely). I'm not even sure if the New York Times even ran their stories online yet in 1998.
So, I accept that the polarization is not the doing of social media - but I don't think the polarization is a natural expression of human instinct. It is, like Hillary Clinton was once mocked for 100% correctly calling "a vast right wing conspiracy."
I DO, however, think that social media makes people MISERABLE. Which would be worth fixing even if it wasn't coming alongside political dysfunction. And it's likely causing polarization to lead to worse decisions, through giving people bad information. That's what got Trump in office in 2016, fake news - a term hadn't been judo'd into a catchphrase by Trump himself, and still meant "news stories, based on events that did not happen, presented as real, on fake websites, to deceive people". (You know, "fake news.")
Your quote from Andreessen about technology solving problems brings to mind a claim from Al Smith: “The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.”
it's only epistemic trespassing if there is a legitimate owner whose turf you are trespassing on. Outside relatively technical issues covered by political scientist, no one has professional expertise on the big questions of politics.
As an aside, economists (not mentioned) are really terrible trespassers/imperialists but no one else listens even on economics, so it probably doesn't matter.
It's epistemic trespassing when you speak as an authority on topics you are not a legitimate expert in. It's not a matter of credentials or ownership. It's okay to talk about things you're not an expert in and have an opinion on them — even strong ones. I do. I write essays that span many different domains that I am not experts in. But I take care to quote and credit experts in the field for ideas, and rely on public intellectuals from other domains to translate knowledge for me. And again, I credit for that.
But when one does — as many "influencer"-types do — position themselves as economists and philosophers without actually understanding any economics or philosophy other than talking-points they got off of mises.org, then I consider that trespassing. You're not even putting in the work for honest disagreement.
Economists — like all social scientists — have to look across and understand-across domains to do economics. But one must be epistemically responsible in doing so, as my other reply describes.
Economists sometimes trespass in areas outside their expertise. But it's hard to blame them when almost everyone else trespasses inside THEIR area of expertise.