Do we live in a Scientocracy?

[swansont]

 

But the idea of evidence-lead policy making is brilliant - the more the better.

 

To a point, yes. But there will be limits, just as democracies are generally limited by the recognition of minority rights that can't be taken away just because a majority wishes it. An effective scientocracy will no doubt need to be limited in the same way.

[Popcorn Sutton]

I've started writing a book about this. I've got about 6 pages so far (single-spaced). Would you guys be nice enough to review it and possibly contribute?

[imatfaal]

 

So, let's consider adding this bit to the Wikipedia page.

 

 

In a democracy, we would need scientocrats in order to get the system started (if we didn't want to do it through a revolution). I think that what you described here is very well written, but I don't see how it could lead to an authoritarian rule, unless you consider the policy scientists, and the whole synergistic system of "scientocrats", as the authoritarian power. But even then, it wouldn't lead to a Lysenkoism, and the reason for that is that we have evidence to support an alternative. It's like how the train has evolved. Engineers take into account all the previous accidents as evidence, and use that data to support alternatives. I think that we are a little more mature in these days, and that if we did notice even the slightest symptom of an authoritarian rule, we'd silence it before it became a problem.

 

In conclusion, hopefully we can sit back, do our armchair science, watch the idea take off, and if we get lucky, we'll see some country, state, province, university, or city implement it. Then, once it has happened, we can watch to see whether the system is self-perpetuating or self-destructing. Then and only then will we have the evidence to guide us.

 

In the meantime, we can at least be vocal about it. We can show our students that the topic is worth discussion, gather their opinions, and see what the bulk of the evidence suggests. I don't believe that this method is going to give much clarity on the subject, and I think we all know how distorted ones views can be when they develop a bias, but it would be interesting to see what people have to say about it.

 

Why not dig out some sources, do a bit of research, read some political science journals etc. With respect, no two of your posts have espoused the same views; why then do you feel you have a good enough sense of the subject to alter a work of reference when you cannot even convince yourself?

 

 

 

 

 

To a point, yes. But there will be limits, just as democracies are generally limited by the recognition of minority rights that can't be taken away just because a majority wishes it. An effective scientocracy will no doubt need to be limited in the same way.

 

Without doubt you are correct; but we are in a situation where evidence-based policy making still seems to be on the retreat and it was hard to imagine current societies changed so much that evidence-based policy making would have to be curtailed. But you are correct; itwill have the same dangers, limitations, and traps as all forms of government when taken to extremes - the single-minded pursuit of even a noble end can lead to oppression.

 

I've started writing a book about this. I've got about 6 pages so far (single-spaced). Would you guys be nice enough to review it and possibly contribute?

 

Why not serialize it here? I am sure the good members will help with constructive criticism.

[Popcorn Sutton]

Ok . I don't want to overwhelm you guys with all 8 pages that I have written so far, so I'll let you guys look it over section by section (and I will mention all contributors in the foreward because I truly do appreciate everything you guys have to say).

 

Here's part one-

 

 

Preface

In a world where economic growth has never been so stagnant and where politicians are not swayed by the bulk of the evidence due to the promises that they made in order to secure a vote, there is still hope amongst us. The sad truth is that many of us are living our lives believing that there is something more out there for us, that the grass will be green, that our efforts are not futile. In my experience, most of us have something negative to say about our political system. We truly believe that our politicians and that our countries really aren’t looking out for our best interest. In many discussions of my own, I hear pessimism about the policies enforced by previous politicians, and rightfully so. There are a lot of significant issues that are simply overlooked by our politicians and lobbyists, and minor issues that seem to take priority.

Today, I envision a different type of society, one that conforms to very successful models of previous political systems, but does not fit the characterization of those systems entirely. This system is what I like to call a Scientocracy. The truth is that there has never been a more opportune moment to endorse such a political system, but that our fear of change may never allow it to happen. Science has a lot to say about contentious issues, and to this point, has only played a minor role in political endeavors. Some people might even say that Science has been detrimental to our economic well-being, and there is some truth to that opinion. In this book, I hope to put these opinions to rest and show that our fear of change is not only unjustifiable, but it’s a hindrance to our economy.

Some people might like to believe that they are valuable, and that is true to an extent, but if there is anything that I have learned by living in our current system, it’s that even though you may be well-known, likable, and charming, the chances are that you are disposable. This is the saddest thing about the time that we live in. If you are not qualified to partake in discussions of top-priority, you do not have the education to back up your claims, you’re basing your opinion on a “gut feeling”, and you’re not sought after for expert advice, then in the eyes of the authoritarian capitalist system that you, unfortunately, fall into, you are, in fact, just another employee. To make things even worse, not only are you just another employee, but you could be making more money than these other people who desire your job. If you’re not meeting and/or exceeding the standard of excellence that any reputable company has achieved, then you may not only be making too much money, but you may also be costing the company more money than you make.

I can’t say that Scientocracy will solve this problem right away, but I can say that these issues are significant, and that if you think that what I described above applies to you, you’re not the only one who feels that way. Since this is a significant issue, it will be dealt with. You may think that Science doesn’t have much to say about an issue such as the one I described above, but that’s just not true. Throughout the book, I will try to help you understand that Science does, in fact, have a lot to say about everything, even the most personal issues.

 

The Basic Premises of Science

Science has maintained a strong stance in our education, and continues to be a driving force behind ones decision to investigate curiosities. It has cultivated a willingness to question in us that could have never arisen if we just accepted what other people said. Science has provided us with an outlet and a group of intellectuals that are willing to partake in discussions that may, and often do, become very influential. When one decides to be vocal about contentious issues, especially in the age of information, they may not realize exactly how influential their ideas may be. If you go through life concerning yourself with your immediate environment and the drama that goes on between you and your friends and family, you are blind to the greater extent of worldly affairs that may, in all actuality, benefit from what you have to say. To make a long story short, we need you. We need to hear your opinion, and we need to know what you think because without your knowledge, something that may be significant may go unnoticed.

One basic premise that drives us to be scientific is to understand. We scientists love ideas. We love to sift through the theories and hypotheses that people bring forward to determine which ones are wrong and which ones are right. I often say that our duty as scientists is to adjust, justifiably stipulate, or, if we get lucky, prove something wrong. In a Scientocracy, it’s not like we will be voting for “left” and “right”, it’s a matter of determining what’s right from wrong. As citizens of a Scientocracy, we can be certain that our voice will not go unheard. Our data will be nit-picked letter by letter and analyzed very specifically using the latest trends in mathematics and computer science. Scientists will use our data to help our government officials understand what seems to be significant. We may not even know when we have “voted” for a contentious issue, but we will notice the change when it occurs, and the changes may be very rapid.

Another premise of science is to prevent pain and loss. It’s very well known by this point that scientists are “laser focused” on making things efficient. Biologists are looking for ways to reverse aging and prevent death. Anesthesiologists inject us with medication that makes us unaware that the doctors are even operating on our bodies. We just sleep through the entire, painless process. This, in my opinion, is easily one of the best reasons one can have for an obsession with science. Even if this was the only premise of science and inquiry, I know that science would have a large enough gathering to persuade people to partake in the investigation.

The third basic premise of science is convenience. We don’t want to bend over and pick up every bit of dirt that we see on the ground, that’s why we invented the broom. When we noticed that the broom wasn’t enough to get rid of the dirt on our comfortable floor mats, we developed the vacuum. When we didn’t want to take the time to vacuum, along came the robot vacuum. I, personally, am very thankful to be living in these times. I might have a distorted view of the world and feel that I am special. I might be shrouded in beliefs that I am special, and that the day will come when the world will realize it and I’ll be rewarded for it. I might have very high expectations of my career in life, so high that when I get somewhere satisfactory, I may still be dissatisfied because I expected more. As depressing as this may sound, I know that I am not the only one with these beliefs, but even with these “delusions”, I am very thankful to be living in these times. I get to participate in online discussions that I know are not “just another talk”. I get to talk with highly respected intellectuals who actually care about what I have to say. I get to see the world with the click of a button. I can fall in love with someone on the opposite side of the planet and see them every day. I can travel 30 miles to the nearest city in less than an hour. I can collaborate with my best friends about what we might like to do for the evening without even saying a word. If this doesn’t satisfy you, then I don’t know what will. If it does, however, then you may like the idea of a Scientocracy.

This part could be the decision maker on the whole idea of Scientocracy. But, the reason I'm posting it is because it is up for debate. Like Imatfaal said earlier, it is a humpty dumpty issue.

 

 

The (Contentious) Definition of a Scientocracy

This debate is not settled, and I’m not sure how soon it will be, but I’d at least like to contribute to the definition and the ideology behind what a Scientocracy may turn out to be. As it is defined in the Wikipedia page, “Scientocracy is the practice of basing public policy on evidence.” This definition is, in my opinion, very, very general. Of course science assumes that we have evidence. If we didn’t have evidence, we wouldn’t know anything. Policy makers should be required to provide us with the evidence behind their decisions, but honestly, it’s not necessary. They make laws in hopes to settle issues, but as we know by looking at topics like drug addiction, sometimes they don’t only not settle the issue, they provoke it to be even more of an issue.

No parent in their right mind wishes harm upon their child, but if their child is curious about what the world has to offer, and what they can do to make their life better, there really isn’t much we can do to prevent them from experimenting. It’s not legal to bind them with shackles in order to make sure that they don’t hurt themselves, and even if it was, I don’t think many of us would consider this a good option. All we can do is inform them about the possible, and likely consequences of their decisions and let them know that it may be better for them to say no. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to say no. It can hurt people, it can isolate us, it can drive someone to insanity, it can even cause someone to kill us. Most people do not deal with rejection very well, and as many people have stated before, rejection is one of our greatest fears.

In a Scientocracy, you can rest assured that these issues will be dealt with. Any data that we can collect, analyze, and, basically, put on a list, will be seen, it will be discussed, and it will be dealt with when it is too significant to ignore. The system will be highly synergistic in the sense that people who specialize themselves in the topics that are significant will work diligently to reduce the significance of the issue and make sure that people are satisfied as soon as possible. The goal of a politician in a Scientocracy is not to enforce their promises that they made to help them secure a vote, but instead, is to reduce the significance of emerging issues as soon as possible. In a Scientocracy, we may not even have to vote. A lot of us don’t even want to vote. If a lot of us are not voting, then that says something about our voting system. Basically, it’s flawed. Consider this, a city has about 100,000 citizens in it, of those 100,000, 4 people decide to run for mayor. Those 4 people lobby their interests, which can sometimes be extreme (bible thumping, anti-gay marriage, etc.), in order to persuade people to vote for them. Finally, the time to vote comes around, and if we get lucky, the elected candidate will have about a thousand votes, and the others will fall behind. Even if every other candidate got 999 votes, that still leaves us with 96,003 voters unaccounted for, and even if half of those people didn’t have the right to vote, for whatever reason, that leaves us with 48,001 voters who just didn’t vote.

Given this thought experiment, it’s easy to see that there is something wrong (even if the numbers are off), or at least outdated, about this whole voting thing. In this age, the age of information, that means that a lot of people who may have opinions that deserve to be heard, people whose happiness and success may depend on one minor legal change, are just being ignored. We may not even know what the issue is, and as such, we focus on issues like abortion, marriage, and whatever other hot topic we can craft. In reality, a hundred citizens may benefit by eliminating the complexity of applying for charity or disability. Another thousand people could really use some immediate help paying for transportation and food. 500 people have the opportunity for a very successful life, but the opportunity is on the other side of the country and relocating is a virtual impossibility. 99,999 people could benefit from getting a minor portion of the assets that 1 person has acquired through investments. It’s stuff like this that isn’t even recognized amongst a fair amount of politicians, and because of this, they don’t even spend a minute thinking about it.

Eliminating the voting system in favor of using data would be a big benefit for the citizens who live in our current system, and this is one thing that Scientocracy really has going for it. Another thing about Scientocracy is that anyone who has a good understanding of the significant issues can be appointed to a position of power so long as their efforts contribute to the society. When the significant issues are reduced, if that politician is not up-to-date with their knowledge, then they have done their service and can now resituate themselves into the society that they helped to enhance. It’s very honorable to have been selected (as opposed to elected) for the position because you are the most suited for it, and by partaking, you have not only made the society a better place for yourself, but you have made it better for many others as well. It would be like jury duty (which I will discuss more later on).

You might ask, “How will the politicians know what needs to be done?” Well, the idea is actually very simple. People talk about what they think all the time, you really can’t prevent them from doing that. What you can do is take that information and use it as evidence. The idea is this. You gather samples of language and segment them statistically. By doing this, you can arrange them according to statistical significance on a list (and the list will be very, very large). By matching the items on the list with what people have said, you can determine who is best suited for a political position. You wouldn’t be voting for any specific candidate, you wouldn’t be choosing any political party, you’d just be talking, as you most likely do, and people will be selected based on what you have said. Here’s one simple example of how the “vote” will be.

“Legalize gay marriage” has been said 2,000 times, therefor, everyone who has ever said “Legalize gay marriage” gets 2,000 votes. “Legalize marijuana” has been said 2,000 times, therefor, everyone who has said “Legalize marijuana” gets 2,000 votes. If you have only said one of those two, you only have 2,000 votes, whereas, if you have said both, you get 4,000 votes. The more votes you have, the more likely you are to be appointed. You may think that this won’t work because someone could just “parrot off information” in order to maximize their chance of being appointed. It is true that if they parrot off more information, they will maximize their chance of being elected, but Scientocracy would use spatiotemporal proximity to determine where they are best suited to conduct the work, and, as I have stated before, their beliefs don’t matter. Their job as a politician is to reduce the significance of the items of top priority (basically, the items at the top of the list). This would be a pretty easy job if it were only about “legalizing x” and “illegalizing y”, but after some time, things will get a little hairy.

Imagine that if, eventually, the time comes around where all the easy stuff is out of the way. By now you’ve made things legal or illegal for the areas that support that decision. At that point, other topics will start coming up that we would’ve never noticed if we didn’t implement this type of system. An example that might pop up is “my car needs to be fixed” with a significance of 1,000. If this item becomes a top priority, and all other significant issues have been reduced (and checked off the list), then you must deal with this issue as if it is top priority. The reason that this may become significant is because people can’t afford to fix their cars, or for whatever reason, they talk about needing to fix their car. Well, lucky for us who are in need of car repairs, the duty of the politician is to reduce the significance of the issue, and because of this, they will find a solution, and the solution may be to fix our cars at the expense of the government.

Given this scenario, it’s easy to see that this will increase our economic well-being. Our tax money will be going to the mechanics who do the jobs, or to the people who come up with the best solution. The politicians will work every day on finding the best solution for the issue, and they will try every solution until the people are satisfied and the issue is less significant. (Note that every time I mention significance, I’m purely speaking from a statistical perspective.)

There are some things that will never lower in significance and can only increase. These items will always be at the top of the list, and those items are mainly for education purposes. An example of these items is vowels, phonemes, diphthongs, morphemes, and words. Obviously those items are significant, and we could use the method of Scientocracy to determine who is best suited to teach these things to our uneducated youth. So, someone who feels compelled to talk about enough, but just doesn’t have enough votes to be appointed to a political position, could be determined as suitable for teaching our youth.

In a Scientocracy, we may not feel the need to enforce “federal law” when it’s in direct opposition to local law, as is often the case. In a lot of circumstances, the federal government is irrelevant when it comes to our local needs. If they don’t think that it’s necessary to legalize something like marijuana federally, then it should not impact our ability to maintain an honorable position as an employee of a company because the company abides by “federal law”, and even though it is legal for you to smoke marijuana locally, if it pops up on a drug test, you get fired. This is just unfair. If your habit is legal, and you’ve gone through whatever process required to ensure that you don’t get penalized for your habit in your area, then you should not have that looming anxiety of getting in an accident on the job and getting fired for doing something that is perfectly legal for you to do in your area. In a Scientocracy, the purpose of the federal government would not be to deal with the issues that local governments are dealing with, because those really are petty when it comes to nationwide endeavors. The federal politicians will be extremely significant and highly respectable because they don’t care whether marijuana is legal or not, they can easily be swayed for both positions, and that’s partially why they were appointed to the federal position to begin with. The people who are appointed to federal positions would be extremely smart. There’s a good chance that there would be no binary federal laws, that is, there is no “federal consensus” to make something absolutely illegal nationwide if it’s in contradiction to local law.

The idea here is that, given enough time, the society will begin to engage in the more profound aspects of life and science. Eventually, once all the squabbling of minor details is put to the side, we can choose to investigate the universe, to travel to space, to build a moon station, to make a space elevator, to make traveling around the world more efficient and practical, and to do the other things that we find significant. We can distribute the assets more fairly. We can continue on our endeavor to achieve our goals and truly make ourselves stand out from the rest (regardless of our credentials). If we implement this system, there is a good chance that our citizens will be happy with the changes. We can experiment with new ideas and decide when the old ones were better.

 

The next section is going to be about ethical considerations.

[Popcorn Sutton]

My friend brought up a valid point yesterday. He said that there is a chance that someone will copy the bulk of my work and publish it as their own. I've decided that if any member of this forum is serious about helping me with editing and reviewing my book before it is published, they have to contact me privately about it so I can determine whether their intentions are good and it won't be stolen. Sorry guys.